


For Now

by JaqofSpades



Category: NCIS, Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Heroine Big Bang 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-09
Packaged: 2017-11-09 12:14:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's the first intern they've ever had. It's the first time anyone has let her near a real federal case. And her chief suspect is the reason she made it out of high school alive. Life's a bitch, Veronica Mars. Then you have to grow up and figure out how to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry in the [Heroine Big Bang](http://heroinebigbang.livejournal.com/) for 2012.  Props to all the wonderful artists, authors and mixers; I'm getting excited about reading them all now that this monster is done!  
> 

  


**Prologue:**

Implacable. That was the word for it, Gibbs realises with annoyed grimace. Leon Vance - _Director_ Vance – was not going to be moved on this.

  
The narrowed eyes, the unsmiling mouth, the motionless pose at the desk. Hands calmly folded on the folder. He wouldn't move them unless it was to hand over the file. Stubborn bastard.  
  
Just as well he knew a thing or two about stubborn himself. Vance wasn't the only one who was implacable, and NCIS did not need an intern. Would not take an intern.  
  
The temptation to sing “nah, nah, nah, you can't make me,” is so strong, Gibbs has to force down a smile. Vance is implacable, but he wouldn't force this. When it came to personnel, they had an agreement.  
  
He was opening his mouth to say “no” – “hell, no,” in fact – when Vance raises an eyebrow and steps up the attack.  
  
“The FBI wants her. They had her last summer, invited her back. They're talking about starting her even before she graduates.”  
  
Bastard taps the folder and doesn't even bother to look him in the eye. Gibbs braces himself for the trump that has to be coming.  
  
“Fornell says some nice things in here. 'Best investigator of her generation.' 'Asset to any agency'.  
  
Gibbs swings on his heel to leave the office. “She better be good,” he mutters to the doorframe as he exits. An intern!  
  
“This'll be on your desk in the morning after I finish making her an offer,” Vance calls after him, waving the folder.  
  
Chuckling, the bastard.  
  
 ***  
  
Chapter One:**  
  
Ziva was midway through her report when his attention started to wander.  
  
“Lt Miguel Arroyo Hernandez. Last seen alive yesterday evening, leaving a bar - Goldilox, 20 th West 10 – approximately 10pm. In the company of two men, also Latino. We haven't yet identified them, but there are several witnesses, and we have a sketch artist working with them, so it ... shouldn't be too long now.”  
  
She pauses, waiting for the explosion. There was no such thing as “too long now” in Gibbs' world. He frowns, but he is looking at the clock. And then the elevator. And back to the clock.  
  
Ah.  
  
“Initial description is dark-skinned, shaven heads, lots of leather, and tattoos. Bikers or street gang, perhaps.”  
  
Two assumptions in one short sentence, and all he does is grunt twice, before his eyes fly back to the elevator. There can be only one conclusion.  
  
Gibbs is expecting someone. And someone is late.  
  
Ziva begins watching the elevator too.

*  
  
The quiet ding reverberates around the Bullpen. The doors slide open, and at first, the elevator seems to be empty. Then a young girl steps out, and does a slow inspection of the entire office.  
  
Lost, maybe, Ziva thinks. But why would they send up a kid on her own?  
  
Fifteen, maybe sixteen, McGee calculates, and orders himself to stop looking at her legs. He is going to need brain bleach the way Di Nozzo's eyes are flicking from the tops of her boots to the bottom of her skirt as if trying to measure the distance.  
  
“What! Miniskirt!” his colleague huffs, rubbing the spot where McGee's elbow had caught his ribs. They are both waiting for the headslap when they notice Gibbs is looking somewhere else, his eyes narrowed in displeasure.  
  
“You the intern? What time do you call this?”  
  
The three agents are still mouthing the word at each other in shock when she fires back her reply.  
  
“The Neanderthal at the desk wouldn't let me up. I've BEEN here since 8.15 but apparently I'm lacking the proper papers. And someone called Gibbs wasn't answering his phone,” she drawls, two parts extreme sweetness to a third of acid. “You guys make the FBI look organised.”  
  
She stalks up to them and slides a heavy messenger bag off her shoulder before sticking out her hand to Gibbs.  
  
“Veronica Mars. Promise I'm worth waiting for.” The coy, honeyed tone is such an obvious flirt – with Gibbs! - that McGee sprays his coffee all over his shirtfront. Nope, not a kid, he hastily revises.  
  
"Ballsy!” DiNozzo thinks and tries to hide his smirk.  
  
Ziva simply nods a welcome, and resists the urge to push her back into the elevator. So the girl is a flirt. Fine. Less than professional, but hardly the first. Very pretty, too. But that has no bearing on anything. Why, then, does this Veronica Mars disturb her?  
  
Something about her smile. The way she wields it like a weapon. And the calculating glint in those too-blue eyes. She is an actress, Ziva realises.  
  
And altogether too good for such a young woman.  
  
*  
  
So this was the guy the big security guard downstairs was so scared of, Veronica thinks sourly. Short silver hair, somewhere in his fifties, she'd guess. Ridiculously well preserved, even if the scowl on his face marred all the pretty. He'd simply growled at her explanation, and yes, pulling on her Valley Girl probably wasn't the most mature reaction, but … whatever. At least two of her new coworkers seemed to like it. The female agent, she noted, didn't. Plenty of time to figure out exactly why that was,Veronica thinks as she braces herself for introductions.  
  
Not that bracing seemed to be needed.  
  
“Veronica Mars, here for the summer. Senior field agent Anthony DiNozzo, agent Tim McGee, probationary agent Ziva David. Ziva!”  
  
And that appears to be that, Veronica realises as Agent David launches back into the briefing her arrival had apparently interrupted.  
  
“Ah – yes, Lt Hernandez was last seen leaving Goldilocks at 10pm with two Latino men. Our artist has already interviewed several witnesses, and we should have sketches coming through later this morning.”  
  
“Crime scene?”  
  
“Just a body dump. No tyre tracks. Only a small amount of blood, and Duckie says it's probably post-mortem anyway. You were there, boss. It's the cleanest I've seen.”  
  
“Me too,” the gangly, open-faced man offers. McGee, Veronica tells herself. Timothy McGee.  
  
“DiNozzo?”  
  
“Seen it before, but not with the gangs. They don't give a rat's ass if it's messy. That clean?” Agent DiNozzo has the smarmy looks of a well-shod womaniser, but seems to know his stuff, Veronica thinks as she watches him exchange a look with the team leader. “Mob, maybe?”  
  
Gibbs simply shook his head without bothering to explain. Wordless interactions, got it. This team was expected to operate on telepathy. Veronica feels her lips quirk as she is possessed by the thought of Gibbs in Professor Xavier's chair, and blinks rapidly to banish the image before she is tempted to cast anyone else.  
  
“ … nothing but minor barfights on his service record, and I'm starting on his cellphone records and financial records,” Agent McGee was saying. Gibbs barely raised an eyebrow in Di Nozzo's direction before the younger agent jumped in “and we're heading over to check out the victim's house, boss. Grab your gear, probie!”  
  
Ziva simply rolles her eyes in Gibbs' direction before slinging a backpack over her shoulder and heading for the lift. Meeting over, apparently.  
  
Gibbs' attention filters back to her – at least he wasn't glowering now – and she smiles brightly. “Time for the tour? Or do you want to put me straight to work?”  
  
He snorts, and points to the desks. “Bullpen. You can have that desk. Might need to clear it first.”  
  
And that, Veronica suspects, was probably as much real work as she'd be doing today. This guy looked ready to stick her behind the coffeepot – he probably had his lunch order already written down. She'd had a moment of hope when she'd seen how intently he'd listened to Agent David, but NCIS couldn't be that different to the FBI.  
  
Her first internship had been in the LA field office, and she hadn't so much as looked at a case file that summer. Then she'd landed the big one – Mr J. Edgar Hoover himself, FBI Headquarters, and it had been even worse.  
  
She had tried to tell herself that everyone had to start somewhere, and it was a learning process, and the beige and black suits were just another disguise, but, really. NCIS had her at “no dress code”. And possibly the words “controversial” and “maverick” on Special Agent Gibbs' FBI file. (Which of course she hadn't seen, because the files on federal employees were subject to very tight security. That Mac really shouldn't have been able to crack.)  
  
“Veronica? You with me?”  
  
She jumps – he can't _really_ be a mind reader – and follows him towards a set of the stairs that lead to a mezzanine floor. They climb silently, then he knocks twice on the door before opening it for her and gesturing for her to go ahead.“Director Vance, the intern is here.”  
  
The man sitting behind the desk flicks assessing eyes in her direction and smiles with a complete lack of warmth. He exudes power in a way she has rarely encountered before. Not the showy facade of an actor or politician, but something more covert, Veronica suspects. Knowledge. Secrets.  
  
“Miss Mars. Take a seat, please.”  
  
She sits.  
  
“Welcome to NCIS, Miss Mars. We're happy to have been able to steal you away from the FBI.”  
  
Something in the quirk of his lips tells her he probably knew the exact date she had burned all those beige suits. And just how many times the word “insubordinate” had been uttered by the Bureau pricks. Veronica shifts uneasily on the chair.  
  
“I'm very happy to be here, Director. I was surprised to learn about the role NCIS plays, and the fact that your teams work so collaboratively. The chance to learn from a group, rather than just one person – it held a lot of appeal.” She resisted the urge to turn around and glare at Gibbs, congratulating herself on being so subtle. Only the tiniest stress on the word 'learn'. Go Veronica.  
  
The Director's lips twitch as he glances up at the man behind her.  
  
“You could do worse than Agent Gibbs and his team, Miss Mars. Much worse. Now if you'll excuse me ...”  
  
Veronica smiles and eases herself away from the desk, while Gibbs simply grunts and opens the door. They are halfway down the hall and at the elevator before he speaks again.  
  
“Morgue or forensics lab?”  
  
Neither of which she'd been allowed near on either of her stints with the FBI. Veronica tells herself to be cool, but … yup, still excited. “Morgue, please!”

*  
  
Veronica is half expecting Dr Scully to appear when Gibbs directs her into the large, white room sharp with chemicals and centred around a row of what she is pretty sure are autopsy tables. Just one, at the far end of the room, is occupied. Two white-coated men confer over a scale full of what Veronica suspects is viscera. Her stomach settles into a slow roll.  
  
“Ah, Jethro!”  
  
Gibbs steps closer to the older of the two men, but her feet remain fixed firmly where they are, even if her eyes can't drag themselves away from the gaping hole in the man's chest.  
  
“I thought you were here to learn?” Gibbs says softly, putting a hand under her elbow and ushering her forward.  
  
“Dr Donald Mallard, Mr Jimmy Palmer – Veronica Mars.”  
  
“Miss Mars, lovely to meet you. I'd shake your hand, but ...” Dr Mallard gestures cheerily, his hands still encased in gloves stained and flecked with dark red globs she doesn't even want to guess at. Too late. Her brain insists on supplying all the possibilities and this time, her stomach threatened to rebel altogether.  
  
It must show on her face because the dapper medical examiner – Dr Mallard - sends her a sympathetic smile.  
  
“Is this your first dead body, my dear?”  
  
And just like that, Lilly Kane is lying next to the swimming pool, blood and brain matter oozing from the wound on the side of her head.  
  
“No.”  
  
Too sharp, she realises, when Dr Mallard takes a long moment to study her face.  
  
“It's my third internship, Dr Mallard. I've done two summers with the FBI already.”  
  
Filing, coffee, internet research if they were feeling generous. But Dr Mallard doesn't need to know that. He might even have read her personnel file, but all the words in the world can't really explain about Lilly, or the bus crash, or the horror of discovering that someone you called a friend had raped you, and killed your friends. No personnel file could ever start to explain how three years of high school had hardened her more than any one person had a right to be.  
  
On the upside, it had given her the skills to rock just the right mix of professional detachment and youthful enthusiasm, she thinks as the older man beams at her.  
  
Gibbs, however, will be a much harder nut to crack. He is obviously bored with their little round of introductions, scowling at the corpse on the table as if it is deliberately withholding information.  
  
“Anything useful yet, Ducky?”  
  
“Cause of death was almost definitely blood loss caused by some combination of three gunshot wounds. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to recover any bullets – not even any bullet fragments – so we don't have anything to help identify the shooter. I'm examining stomach contents now, to see if that won't help reconstruct his last movements, and Jimmy has done his absolute best to find any fibres or residues … but – he's very clean, Jethro. Professionally clean.”  
  
“Yeah, Duck, we're working on that. We've got a witness, though, and maybe when we find the kill site ...” Gibbs shrugs, then turns to leave. Veronica shoots an embarrassed smile at Dr Mallard and returns Palmer's cheery wave before following him out the door.  
  
“One more stop then I'll put you to work. This is our forensics lab.”  
  
The doors had only slid open a fraction when Nine Inch Nails comes roaring out to meet them, and really, after that? The lab tech shouldn't have been a surprise.  
  
Gibbs leads her through a maze of monitors and chrome to where they can see a tall woman in a white labcoat undulating to the beat. She spins around and Veronica is still processing – schoolgirl pigtails, anime face, black t-shirt, tiny pleated skirt and _ohmygod_ , the boots! Then Gibbs does the most unexpected thing of all.  
  
He smiles.  
  
“Hey, Abs. Meet our intern. Veronica Mars, Abby Sciuto. Head of Forensics for NCIS.”  
  
Veronica is so impressed with Abby – head of forensics for a federal agency, and not even out of her twenties? - that she nearly misses the incredulous look.  
  
“An intern? Here? At NCIS?”  
  
Little green men flying in from outer space might have met with less shock, Veronica frowns. Sure, she hadn't been able to track down anyone else who had ever interned here, but it wasn't as if she could be the first. Could it?  
  
Gibbs shrugs. “Vance said we needed an intern. And the FBI wanted Veronica.”  
  
“Ohhhh! So you came to us, instead! That's so cool!”And suddenly, making so much more sense, Veronica smiles internally.  
  
Gibbs had launched into an explanation of Abby's skills - pretty much everything the FBI maintained multiple specialist labs for, by the sound of it – and was fast moving on to what was obviously the real purpose behind her tour. An investigator who didn't answer his phone and obviously hated email. Right.  
  
“Watcha got, Abs?”  
  
“Oh! Um. Ducky's trying to give me an idea of what we're after ballistics wise, but we've got no bullets or shells to work with – someone's actually removed them from the vic's flesh, Gibbs! I've got a few residues to look at, but … the feet and hands have been washed, and I'm guessing he's been redressed too, so … probably nothing worthwhile.”  
  
The poor woman looks so downcast that Veronica feels sorry for her.  
  
“I guess the fact that you don't have anything is something in itself – from what I've heard, you guys are the best at this stuff,” she volunteered. “Maybe I could do some research on other clean scenes and bring them down to you to see if there are any parallels?”  
  
Gibbs simply grunts, while Abby jumps up and down with glee. This, Veronica thinks in awe as they headed for the elevator, is a woman who really loves her work.  
  
Kinda cool, she has to admit.

*  
  
She and Gibbs have barely stepped from the elevator when David and DiNozzo come tumbling out, clearly engaged in some sort of argument.  
  
“Ziva, I'm just saying, Gibbs would never agree -”  
  
“Wouldn't agree to what, Tony?” Gibbs drawls, just as Ziva kicks her partner and shoots her eyes in Gibbs' direction.  
  
“Uh, nothing, boss. Wouldn't agree to ...”  
  
“Docking people's pay for gossiping? Yeah, I would.”  
  
DiNozzo is still searching for something to say, his partner hiding behind his back and quite clearly shaking with laughter, when McGee hollers across the room.  
  
“Boss! Drawings of the two suspects have just come through. Loading them up now!”  
  
The screen between the desks flickers and two photographs depixellate into clarity.  
  
One man is thin-faced, weaselly, nondescript. The other ...  
  
“Looks like a charmer – but that crown tattoo should make it easy enough,” Gibbs voice echoes, as if from far away.  
  
The other ...  
  
He'd hardly changed at all. His head is shaved again, like it had been in junior year, when he was the king of the PCH Bike Club. He is leaner, perhaps, and the soul patch is more defined than it was when saw him last. Before he went to jail. For the second time.  
  
Veronica stares, then closes her eyes as her mind starts to spin. Could she warn him? Misdirect them? He has a criminal record. Even through the DMV, he'd be easy to track. They'd find out anyway. And would know she had lied. There is nothing to gain by keeping it quiet.  
  
She feels like Judas anyway.  
  
“I know who that is,” she says, and even as she speaks, her right hand finds her left shoulder, rubbing circles, drawing comfort. Remembering.  
  
 _He pounced the minute she opened the door. “Show me.”_  
  
“ _Show you … what? The essay I'm trying to write? A dance routine? My boobs?” She'd nailed the line, she knew she had, but he was in no mood to be swayed._  
  
“ _He got you, didn't he? He took something from you.”_  
  
 _My pride? My sense of safety? My peace of mind? Too many questions she didn't want to answer, but he'd always known how to stop her thinking, stepping behind her to collect her hair in one huge fist. She'd been brushing it, over and over, and it crackled with static as he wrapped it around his hand, gently lifting it free of her neck to reveal the shaved patch underneath._  
  
“ _V.” His voice was choked, but his arms were around her now, pulling her back into his chest, into warmth and strength and solidity and safe._  
  
“ _I've got you. I've always got you, chica.”_  
  
 _Her eyes blurred with tears, and all she could see was orange and black of his new tattoo, the big cat caught in full leap, it's tail curling about his bicep and head turning to snarl at her from his wrist._  
  
“ _A jaguar?”_  
  
“ _My great grandmother said it was my spirit animal, to help me find my strength. Ix, it's called.”_  
  
“ _It's beautiful. The idea, too. Maybe I should get one.”_  
  
“ _You got me, mami. I'm your jaguar.”_  
  
 _Four months later, she was sitting in the back of the court as he was sentenced for failing to return the last of the student card machines. They'd worked the case together, and she had surrendered two, and ignored his hints about finding a third. He hadn't used it, but simple possession had been enough to convict a former felon, and the guilt was crushing her._  
  
 _His lawyer dropped the envelope into her hands as the courtroom emptied._  
  
 _Inside were two sheets of paper. On one, a jaguar lazed, dark brown eyes staring out at her, and one paw raised as if in benediction. On the other, a woman's back, gorgeously adorned with the same image, the jaguar's paw resting protectively on her shoulder._  
  
 _She deserved the pain, she told herself as the needle bit, over and over. Two weeks later, after the scabs had fallen off, she had driven up to Chino to visit him for the first – and last – time._  
  
 _Ix had been her strength ever since._  
  
 _***_  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's the first intern they've ever had. It's the first time anyone has let her near a real federal case. And her chief suspect is the reason she made it out of high school alive. Life's a bitch, Veronica Mars. Then you have to grow up and figure out how to live.

**Chapter Two**

“His name is Eli Navarro. Out of Neptune, California. He has a criminal record.”

It was the flatness in her voice that catches Ziva's interest. The girl's posture hadn't changed, she wasn't jittery or overly casual. She might have been reading the phone book. Ziva hadn't met an intern before, but shouldn't this be exciting for her? Identifying a suspect?

“And you know this how?”

There. Her eyes had closed a little. Blocking out reality. Her recovery was surprisingly good, though, her movements natural and fluid. Voice even, now, the tone changing, as if she was glad to help. Anyone else would have missed it – the girl is very talented, Ziva thinks.

“We went to high school together. Were friends. Of a sort.”

Veronica's gaze flicks from the dark, almond-shaped eyes to the ridiculously full lips of the man in the picture, Ziva notices. That suggests exactly what sort of friends they had been, and the very fact that she was offering this information … what is she trying to conceal? Was she simply panicking, or did she have an axe to grind? Is it possible she might know more about the case than they do?

Ziva reins in her paranoia and forces her attention to McGee, who has pulled up Navarro's details from AFIS.

“Navarro, Eli Antonio. Born August 2, 1989, Neptune, California? Looks like the same guy. And … it's a long list of charges ...” Tony reads from his screen.

“Highlights, McGee,” Gibbs growls.

“Jailed in 06 – six months for assault, and jailed again in 08, 18 months for fraud. Nothing here to say he'd be capable of murder, though,” Tony frowns.

Veronica had paled, Ziva notes. Was it 'murder' that had done that? She had known he had a record - did she know about crimes that hadn't made his record? Paranoia, Ziva reminds herself. In a free society, everyone deserved their secrets...

“Kid picked up some new tricks in prison. Bring him in.”

Veronica flinches as Gibbs gives the order, panic flitting across her face for the tiniest of moments. How will she react sitting across the desk from him, Ziva wonders. How would he react to her?

She looks up and catches Gibbs in a stare. She had been watching Veronica, and Gibbs had been watching her – and his eyebrows lift slightly, asking the question.

Ziva shrugs. Wait and see. Put the bait out there. They both knew what divided loyalties look like, and they both knew that sometimes, all you needed was a chance to choose.

Everyone deserved their secrets … until it interferes with an investigation.

*

“So, what are the odds of that happening? Gotta be … at least a thousand to one? Maybe a million?

Tony's voice cuts through the quiet in the car and straight into her mental disquiet.

“Of what?”

He scoffs disbelievingly. “Of knowing the suspect. On your first day as an intern at NCIS. Not to mention, the first intern NCIS has ever had! NCIS doesn't DO interns, Ziva!”

“Does that bother you more than the thought that she may have compromised our case, Tony? The fact that she is an intern – or is it that things might be changing?”

“No!” He sounds indignant, but puzzled as well. “Yeah, it's about the case, but ...”

Ziva holds her counsel and waits for things to click into place, resisting the temptation to count under her breath. His jaw works and his eyes narrow, as if the other cars on the road were offering a personal insult. Then he turns his head to look at her.

“Why is she our first intern? How good can one kid's college transcripts be? What has she done that makes Gibbs want to break the habit of his whole working life? Maybe it's not a coincidence? Maybe it's her. Is she here because of this?”

“You mean, like a sting? Undercover?”

“Nah. No. Maybe?”

Ziva considers that, then shakes her head. “No. It was a shock. She was … emotional for a moment there. She didn't want it to be him.”

“And that's something else. I don't know what it was like where you went to school, but here? Girls like that don't even look at guys like him. I mean – he could have been been a choirboy five years ago, but I'm guessing not, you know? Girl has cheerleader practically stamped on her forehead, and he wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near her.”

“So the fact that she knows him – enough to be sad about it – is a clue, no?”

“Yeah – I'm thinking it is. Give McGoogle a call. We need some background on Miss Veronica Mars.”

Ziva smiles as she waits for McGee to pick up. This is why she loves NCIS. Gibbs was the master manipulator, the quiet man who needed every detail at his fingertips. She had trained as a assassin, with a sideline in interrogation. McGee was a technical wizard. And Tony? He was the puzzle master. He liked to look at pieces, and see why they did – or didn't – fit.

Secrets are a liability in this business, she wants to warn the new girl. Don't take it personally.

“McGee. We want some deep background on the intern. Yes. Focus on high school, and find out how she knows Navarro. Tony said something about cheerleaders, and them not being able to speak? And what is so special about her that Gibbs said yes to an intern.”

McGee is making noncommittal noises that suggested other ears might be listening to his end of the call. Even so, he is struggling to hide his excitement.

“I was thinking the same thing, Ziva. Been looking into it. Only got as far as Google, but – Tony's right. Interesting stuff.” He lowered his voice significantly to almost whisper in her ear. “Ask Tony if the names Lilly Kane and Cassidy Casablancas ring a bell.”

“Thanks McGee, I will. We are here now.”

She taps the names into her phone as they pull in next to the grimy apartment block that his parole officer advised was Eli Navarro's current address.

Jogging up five sets of stairs doesn't seem conducive to conversation, and then Tony is banging on the door with his traditional “NCIS – open up!” Courtesy dictates they wait at least a few minutes before breaking the door down, so she asks: “Who is Lilly Kane?”

Tony doesn't get the chance to answer before the door opens to reveal their suspect. He is far better looking than his photograph had suggested, Ziva realises. Nor had the image managed to convey the anger and pain spitting from those black eyes.

“Who the fuck are you? And what's this got to do with Lil? I didn't kill her, fuckwits. Thought the goddamned case was closed.”

“Huh. Usually we get the first word,” Tony says drily, flashing his badge.

“Agent DiNozzo, agent David. Are you Eli Navarro?”

“Depends on who's askin'. What's NCIS anyways?”

Ziva winces at Tony's least favourite question, then jumps in to answer. They weren't arresting him, not yet, so it would help if things could be kept civil.

“The Naval Criminal Investigative Service. You've been identified as a witness in a case we're looking at and we'd appreciate if you'd come down to the Navy Yard to answer some questions.”

Navarro stares at them for a few moments longer, then shrugs. “Yeah, whatever. Just grab my phone.”

“And we'll just come in to wait. If that's okay.”

“Place isn't big enough for you to lose sight of me, dude. I'm going – there,” he explains theatrically, waving his hands at the messy table on the other side of the sparse living room.

Ziva restrained Tony with a hand and smiles apologetically. “We'll be fine out here, Mr Navarro.”

He laughs outright as he collects his keys and phone, then smirks in her direction as he locks the door.

“Babe. You'd be fine anywhere,” he purrs, black eyes fixed on hers in unashamed appreciation.

She hates men who called her 'babe'. And suspects hit on her all the time and don't they know what a cliché it is? And she'd never particularly liked Latino men.

So why by all that was holy did she suddenly feel very, very sorry for Veronica Mars?

*

“Have you seen many interviews?” Gibbs asks, and Veronica has to smile at how innocuous the question seems. Coiled snakes, she thinks. Every one of us.

“This'll be my first,” she lies. (Breathy. A little excited, but still trying to be professional, she directs herself.) “Will I be allowed to sit in?”

“Not in the room, no. Particularly since you know the suspect. But we have a viewing area, and generally, everyone available observes. More perspectives, the better.”

Not the FBI, she is reminded. So not the FBI.

Veronica's stomach churns, an uncontrollable reminder that she needs to escape, to think. She doesn't do well with circumstances conspiring against her, she has learned. She lands on her feet, she survives, but there is always a victim.

She hates it most when it's him.

Gibbs ushers her into the viewing gallery, her attention immediately captured by the long window stretching the full length of the room. McGee and Abby stand shoulder to shoulder close by, and Dr Mallard sits in a chair in the corner. She ignores them all, because Eli Navarro is just metres away, on the wrong side of the one-way glass.

Slouched in the chair, head thrown back, Weevil is examining the ceiling in an exquisite facsimile of boredom. His body (leaner, she sees with a shock. Harder?) is oriented towards the door, but those black eyes are sliding slowly over every surface in the room, noting the cameras, the recording equipment. The fact that he can't see out of the long, high window that looks down into the room. He tilts his head, and feigned indolence is stolen by obvious calculation. Veronica stiffens, then forces herself to relax as Gibbs shoots her a sidelong glance.

“Don't worry. He can't see you,” he offers, and Veronica forces herself to smile, as if relieved. Gibbs means well, she tells herself as she watches a smirk tug at the corner of Weevil's mouth. They don't know you yet. (Unlike the criminal in the interview room, who knows you better than anyone else alive.)

Someone has left a notepad and ballpoint on the table, and Weevil is toying with it, pushing the pen over the paper in long, sweeping strokes. She takes the time to examine him slowly: the scuffed motorcycle boots, black jeans that actually fit. A simple white t-shirt that hugs huge pecs and massive biceps. New ink, a riot of dark swirls down one arm, spilling over his wrist and the hand that is holding the paper steady. His jaguar, forever leaping on the other arm.

He glances at the glass once more, and flashes his teeth in the sly grin that makes her wonder what's coming next. Levers himself to his feet, and strolls closer. He can't hear her slamming heart, Veronica reassures herself. Can't feel her, the way she could always feel him. He can't.

But then he presses the notepad up against the glass, just inches from where she's standing. Gibbs curses, and McGee's gasp drowns out her own. They're all staring at the sketch of a girl, biting her lip and eyes half-shut, abandoned to feeling.

A sketch of her.

She needs to rescue this now, Veronica thinks coolly. Should she be oblivious? Embarrassed? Shock, she can do – she had forgotten how his pencil could capture a person's essence, and to think this was how he saw her, still … it was unexpected. And problematic, because she's trying not to think about it, the fact that they'd never quite managed to move past this. That. Her face, twisted in pleasure, mouth open, hands tangled in her own hair. The lines of her neck, fading into nothingness thankfully, because her memory is filling in the gaps. Brown hands, lifting her high. Long artist's fingers, stroking and plucking and pulling. Lips at her throat, and the moustache he'd worn then, tickling its way down her body. She shudders, because as good as the drawing is? Her version comes complete with sensation and sound.

She glances sideways at Gibbs and takes the easy, familiar slide into raw sensuality. “Let's just say he's a very talented man.” It works, of course, because no one can slut it up quite like Veronica Mars, and this Veronica is very distracting indeed.

McGee is downright flustered, and Gibbs is barking into his earpiece.

“Ziva, get yourselves in there and question him now,” he snaps. “Don't be nice. Bastard's playing with us.”

She wants to object, but stops short. Maybe he is. She doesn't know this man any more, and he could be guilty. Could be playing them.

And she needs to decide whether or not she's in his corner anyway.

***


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's the first intern they've ever had. It's the first time anyone has let her near a real federal case. And her chief suspect is the reason she made it out of high school alive. Life's a bitch, Veronica Mars. Then you have to grow up and figure out how to live.

**Chapter Three**

“Mr Navarro. Where were you last night?”

Ziva's the probie, but this time, Tony's letting her lead. The dirtbag's been leering at her, and he's going to be a lot more cooperative with her than he would with another guy. Besides. She's a super assassin ninja spy. One wrong move and the kid is toast.

He needs popcorn, because Ziva's pretty damn pissed after the stunt with the sketch. Disrespectful, she'd said. Compromised the team's professionalism. He'd nodded – shuddup, she's scary - even though he thinks she's missing the real question. How had Navarro known Veronica Mars was on the case? Let alone standing on the observation deck, watching? Even now, the kid's eyes keep flicking up, as if he can see her through the glass. It's pretty clear where his attention is, even as he turns to face Ziva with an exaggerated once over and wide, wolfish smile.

“In bed. All alone. Unfortunately,” Navarro answers, batting his eyelashes. Ziva simply snorts, and asks him if he's ever been to Goldilox.

He asks her if she likes to dance, and Tony has to admit it. Kid's got _game_ – his autopilot is stuck on flirt, and some women would lap it up. He hopes Ziva lets him live.

Tony's jaw drops when she leans in way too close to lay out the surveillance photos on the table, then lowers her voice suggestively.

“Not with men who like to dance around,” she says, drilling the kid with those ridiculous Spanish eyes and her tight little smile, the one that makes every man on the planet think about exactly what they have to do to make her lose that cool.

He's been leaning against the wall near the door while Ziva does her thing, but suddenly he needs to observe the suspect a bit more closely. Arms length close, so he can catch every lie, and if that means he's going to cramp Ziva's style, well, so be it.

She raises an eyebrow as Tony drops into the seat she has just abandoned, then decides to ignore him, tapping the photograph impatiently.

“This man. For what purpose were you meeting?”

The flirtatious kid disappears when Navarro is confronted with his own image staring up from the photographs. His chin lowers and his gaze sharpens, even as he shrugs with seeming nonchalance. It's the glance up into the viewing area that gives him away, Tony thinks. He doesn't want her to know about this.

“Friend of a friend. Beer, tequila, few more beers ...”

“So – you were too drunk to know what happened that night?”

“I'm never _too_ drunk, baby. I know when to stop. We left about 11pm, helped him out because he'd had too much. Then I went home. To my cold, lonely bed.”

“And what condition was your friend of a friend in when you left him?”

“That cabron? Too much tequila. He got a little loco, you know? Wanted to pick a fight with everyone.”

“Is that why your knuckles are bruised? Because he picked a fight with you?”

“That? No. Some bunch of frat boys was makin' cracks about the three amigos, so we taught 'em a bit about respect, you know? We barely touched 'em.”

“You won't mind if we swab your knuckles for DNA, then,” Ziva says smoothly.

Navarro abandons all pretence at casual then.

“What the fuck for? A bar fight? You feds can't have enough to do!” he objects. “Why do you need my DNA?”

Ziva smiles sympathetically and drops the bomb.

"Not yours. Your dead friend's.”

Navarro's mouth falls open and Tony can see the point when rage overtakes shock.

“You're trying to put me in the frame for a murder? Not fucking again!” Navarro curses, swinging towards the window. “This is bullshit, V. Get your sweet ass down here and straighten this shit out!”

Tony almost felt sorry for the kid. He's still some sort of lowly gangster, and his girl had gone and grown up and got a real job, and for them to collide here, again … it had to suck. It's not like she could actually help him, even if she wanted to – Gibbs would never let her. Veronica Mars didn't seem like the type to bother, anyway.

Tony has resigned himself to some manly shoulder patting to try and get the guy to calm down when he hears the sudden click of the door. Gibbs looks in and jerks his head at the them both.

“Miss Mars and I will take it from here,” the bossman tells Navarro, and then Veronica Mars sways past, takes the suspect by the hand, and tugs him back to the table.

“So. Weevil. Let's catch up,” she says, head tilted to one side. They're practically having eyesex across the table, Tony thinks dazedly, waiting for Gibbs to blow a gasket.

“Where – exactly – do you wanna start, chica?” Navarro asks, and his eyes stay on hers, but his voice suggests every dirty innuendo known to man.

“Oh, I can think of a few places,” she purrs, forefinger tapping at her lips as if trying to decide. “How about you start with why you're in DC, and we'll go from there.”

Navarro's face splits with a grin and Tony is struck with the realisation that, for the first time, they are actually seeing the man he is, rather than some role he plays.

And that he is starting to feel really fucking sorry for Eli Navarro.

*

“Just a job, V. After I got out, no point going back to Neptune. Drifted around a while, checking things out. Worked out of SD for a while, and then last month, one of the cousins called up and said they needed help out here, so hey presto. New car yard. New fucking life, hey?”

He sounds so fucking bitter, Weevil realises with disgust. Sure, life hadn't handed him a first class ticket, but he'd done allright. Gotten out of it alive, which was more than some. Had to be thankful. But there'd always been something about Veronica Mars that turned him into a whiny bitch, and sure enough, here he was, feeling sorry for himself.

Five minutes, it had taken him. Once he'd figured out this wasn't about Lilly, it was pretty obvious Veronica was had to be in the mix somewhere. He'd always known she'd end up with the Feds – too fucking smart to do anything else – and he'd always known this might happen. Now though, when he can still hear the way her breath would hitch over his name sometimes, and the salt-sweet taste of her skin … it's too fucking soon. Sue him for being an asshole, but he wasn't ready to become just another mugshot for Veronica Mars.

The notepad had been right there, and by the time he realised what he was doing, his fingers had remembered the line of her neck as she dropped her head back, panting, and the way she'd chew on her lip as she got closer and closer. Blue-green eyes at half-mast, hands pulling at her own hair as he worked her up and over. She had to be out there, watching, he figured, because Veronica Mars wouldn't stay away. She needed to see him, just like he needed to see her, so he sketched in the detail, and held it up to the glass, taunting her.

He expects her to come stomping straight down, but instead he finds himself putting on a show for the duo he's named Agent Sexy and Agent Smooth. There's nothing not to like about a beautiful woman wearing a gun, especially when he's looking for reaction out of someone else, so he lays it on thick and it's fun – right up to the moment she asks for a sample of his DNA. And then dumps a bunch of photographs in front of him – himself, Fernando, and the contact, stumbling out of the bar together.

And then, apparently, Hernandez got dead.

He knows what it feels like to be a suspect, and he's in the frame for this. And the last thing he wants is to get Veronica Mars mixed up in another one of his fucking messes, but he's pretty sure she already is. And he needs to know how.

And then she's there, and it's a fucking education. She still makes him want stuff. Her, mostly, but not just her tight little body and the wildcat sex. He knows it's wrong, and stupid, but he wants it back, the way she'd seen who he was, and trusted him anyway. Relied on him. He hates himself, though, because it took him a long time to figure out just how dangerous that was, and here they are. Right back at square one, stupid for each other.

The first time she'd come to see him in Chino, he'd been in the infirmary with a new addition to his collection of knife scars. The second time, his visiting privileges had been revoked (he'd finally figured out how to make a knife of his own) and by the third time, he'd worked it out. She didn't belong here, and she didn't belong with him. He'd refused to see her, and stayed in his bunk all day, moping like a little bitch.

He was right, though. She needed to stop wanting him, and he needed to stop thinking he could have her. High school was fucking over, and college had kicked their collective asses. She was heading one way, and he was heading the other, and this – this little room, with it's fancy window right up there, and the recording system still ticking away – this was the only intersection.

He wasn't about to fuck it up for her. But he wasn't about to go back to jail either.

Just as well he was a damn good liar.

*

“So, you guys had a little discussion, no fatalities whatsoever, and then you went home, and they went where?”

“Home, I guess. Fernando – he's the other mechanic in my primo's garage – was saying his woman was real grumpy about him being out the night before, so he had to be home early. Hernandez – the guy who got done – wanted to stay out longer, but they've been buds for years and Fernando wanted him to come and play some COD at their house. Only safe thing to do when you're drunk, right?”

Veronica rolled her eyes, memory full of Weevil and Felix and Hector spread out over the Navarro's lounge room floor, the endless battle raging between them. She was the worst fucking partner, Weevil would complain, because she needed to learn to disembowel the fuckers, not just put them down. “All about the points, chica!” he'd scold her, and she'd offer to go sit in Hector's lap, and let Felix be his partner.

And then she remembered what they used to do _after_ COD, and the tease tripped off her tongue before she could stop it.

“One of the only things, anyway.” And yes, his mouth still dropped open a little to let him drag in an extra breath, and he still shot her those testing glances from half-hooded eyes, just to see if she was saying what he thought she was saying.

No, she wasn't, Veronica reprimanded herself with a shake. She was a final year intern looking for a permanent role in the federal justice system, and there was no way she was flirting with the suspect during an interview.

(He didn't do it. You know that. He's not even a good suspect – he had a good reason to be there, no motive to kill him. He's not a murderer.)

Still not flirting. Don't look in his eyes, Veronica. Or at his mouth.

“Uh, so have you spoken to Fernando since? Was he at work today?”

“Dunno. I didn't go in. I'm rostered to work the weekend, so I've got today and Tuesday off. He's rostered on – should be there.”

Gibbs, she notices, has made a note of that, jerking his head in the direction of the observation room. McGee would be checking it out already, she was willing to bet.

If Weevil's story was true, there was little else he could tell her about Miguel Hernandez. But when she dared to really look at him, she could see the calculation behind his eyes. Had he forgotten how well she knew that look, those shutters? He was spinning a story; leavening his tale with enough truth to create a solid, believable lie. (They'd perfected the technique together.)

She doubts he's forgotten how to read her, so she gives him his least favourite smile, all sharp teeth and narrowed eyes. “Liar,” it says, and “I'm on to you.”

His eyes flick away, and are harder when they return. He's not asking for her trust now, or any sort of consideration at all. Fine.

“Any theories on why someone would want Mr Hernandez dead?”

Because Weevil has one weakness – he's a smart guy who looks like a thug. He sees a lot and thinks a lot, and sometimes, likes to throw his cleverness in people's faces. He'll have theories, allright, and he'll be dying to share them.

He shakes his head a little as if chiding her boldness, and shrugs for the audience.

“Nah. Didn't know him well enough – first time I met him, that night,” he says casually, studying his fingernails. “You'd be better off talking to Fernando, or his wife. Anyone else, really. I'm just the cholo who happened to be standing next to him the night he got killed, _Dios tenga en su gloria_.”

Gibbs has been watching silently, eyes fixed on Weevil's face. Veronica has been expecting him to take over, pshawing with disgust at her inability to get useful information, so is surprised when he stands quietly and switches off the recording deck.

“Thank you for coming in to see us, Mr Navarro. You've been very helpful indeed,” he says quietly. “Agents DiNozzo and David will take you home now, if you'd like.”

Weevil cocks a brow in surprise, then rises slowly, as if expecting to be dragged back down to the table. He takes two steps towards the door, then looks back. He's weighing something, she thinks, and wonders what's heavier. His conscience? Their history? Guilt?

Their eyes collide and the question is achingly familiar.

And she's fucked, because she already knows her answer, and the only thing yet to be resolved is how soon they'll be able to get each other alone.

*****

Gibbs watches the kid roll down the hallway, the overhead lights reflecting off his shaven skull. He'd scowled his way through the formalities, but he didn't walk like a man who'd just been shot down by an old girlfriend. He walked like he had somewhere to be, or something to look forward to, and Gibbs hoped to hell it wasn't what he suspected it was.

The interview room had fair crackled with sexual tension. Even a blind man could have figured out they'd been together, and they were both hanging out for round two. That wasn't what worried him. It was all the conversations in that room that had deafened him with what they didn't say.

Like, what was a girl like her doing with a hood like him anyway? On the surface, they just don't fit, the overachieving white girl and the surly Latino biker. But two hours of testing looks, of hidden smiles and watchful gazes – that's more than just sex. He's had marriages less intimate than that.

And what did that say about their intern? For all her California-blonde, she's sharp, Gibbs realises. Sharper than she lets on, and way more experienced to boot. The FBI might have sidelined her – he has no doubt about that – but she's been in interview rooms, and seen autopsies and photographed at least one crime scene before. And she's learned to hide behind a series of facades, allowing no one to see the real Veronica Mars.

He'd read her file, and dismissed all the comments about her inability to follow orders, and her lack of respect for procedure. Even flicked through the unsolved cases she's thought to have been involved in - a kidnapping, when she was still in high school, and a strange mess with the software billionare more recently.  She's gotten off scot-free, and until he'd seen her in action with Navarro, he'd assumed that meant she was innocent.

Now, he's not so sure. Her moral compass worries him. Not just the flat disregard for the rules, but the ruthless core of her, the steel hiding behind the flirty smiles and biting wit.

He'd hire her in a minute, if he knew he could trust her.

***  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's the first intern they've ever had. It's the first time anyone has let her near a real federal case. And her chief suspect is the reason she made it out of high school alive. Life's a bitch, Veronica Mars. Then you have to grow up and figure out how to live.

**Chapter Four**

“Get your gear. They think they found the kill site.”

David and DiNozzo rise simultaneously and are halfway to the lift, gearbags in hand, by the time Gibbs finishes the sentence. Tim McGee fumbles in a drawer for two seconds before joining them, shooting Veronica a sympathetic glance as he goes. She nods tightly, and turns back to the crime scene photos still spread over her desk from yesterday. She hopes whoever is documenting this scene does a better job.

“Is there a problem, Mars?”

Gibbs is holding the elevator door ajar, and looking pissed.

“Excuse me?”

“I said “get your gear”. That means everyone. Hopefully before the scene gets trampled?”

Hopefully no one heard the silly little squeal of glee, Veronica thinks as she collects her jacket and tries not to skip across the room to join the NCIS team.

DiNozzo and David's matching smirks suggest otherwise, however, so she has to say something.

“Can I take the photos this time? I find it really helps when they're in focus,” she says, voice dripping with sweetness.

David gapes at the affront, and McGee and DiNozzo move as one to the furthest corner of the elevator. Gibbs merely smiles, and leans forward to pluck the camera bag from the Israeli woman's shoulder.

“Have at it,” he shrugs, and for a moment, Veronica wonders if he's biting back a smile. Nah, she decides. Trick of the light.

The scene is deep into Maryland and the Beltway slows them to a crawl even before they get to what Tony explains is the 301. It's an uncomfortable forty minutes stuck in between David and McGee in the back of a too-small SUV, making small talk about her criminal justice major, and dodging questions about her past investigative experience.

“My Dad was a private investigator. I used to help him out,” she says casually. “Filing, coffee for the clients, that sort of thing.” When McGee turns wounded puppy eyes on her, it's time to stonewall. She's had plenty of practice – her sordid history is out there in the public domain – and has perfected the blank stare that warns people not to ask about Lilly, or Neptune, or being the infamous daughter of the twice-booted Sheriff.

Not these people, apparently.

“So, the Lilly Kane murder. What happened there?”

Federal interns, she had learned, couldn't go around calling acquitted movie stars murderers. Even when he'd tried to kill her too. So the story was short, when she was forced to tell it.

“Lilly was my best friend. She was murdered. I needed to find out who did it.”

The sympathy oozes from McGee's pores, but David's eyes are still enquiring. She's the tough one, Veronica thinks. McGee is a genius, but too nice to be a threat. DiNozzo is sharp, but he'd be easy to trap, with all those romantic notions. David and Gibbs, though – they'll see through her, Veronica suspects. And they'll give no quarter.

She has to figure out how to play this.

“Did you?”

The accent suggested that it was possible David had never heard of Lilly Kane, or even Aaron Echolls. That she didn't know about the trial, and the newspaper stories, and the two bullets that had left a man dead in the penthouse of the Neptune Grand. Veronica nearly smiled. Possible, yes. But she was veering towards unlikely. Her luck was like that.

“Yes. I did. He told me how he bashed her head in, and then he tried to kill me. And a jury still let him walk.” She could feel the bitterness snapping and snarling in her gut, threatening to push its way up and make her less than what she was. She turned to David and forced her mouth into a wide, bright smile. “On the upside, I'm fairly enthusiastic about admissible evidence these days.”

Tony DiNozzo's voice cut in front the front.

“Musta sucked. So – how does Eli Navarro fit in to all that? Sounded like he might have been a suspect.”

Cool, Veronica reminded herself as her teeth ground together. It's their job. Your job, if you play this right. These answers wouldn't hurt him. (And there it is, Veronica. Way to set your priorities.)

“He was one of Lilly's lovers. Broke into her house to steal some things after she was gone. Police had to look at him.”

“Kid has form a mile long. Police were already looking,” Di Nozzo snorted. “Who's the Mars on the arrest records?”

As if they didn't know.

“My Dad.”

“I guess that explains why you were into him. Way to piss Daddy off!” Di Nozzo wisecracked. Veronica was about to put the smarmy bastard in his place when David leaned forward to smack him over the head.

Gibbs glanced in the rear-vision mirror and exchanged a tiny smile with David. His obvious approval made Veronica glad she'd held her tongue. Momentarily, at least.

“More to do with the muscles and the tattoos, really,” she fake-confessed. “Everyone loves a badass. But I guess you wouldn't know anything about that, would you DiNozzo?” she insinuates, eyes flicking in David's direction.

Two birds, one stone, Veronica smirks to herself as Ziva's jaw drops and Tony flushes pink with annoyance. McGee chokes on his laughter, mumbling something about rules, and Gibbs' lips quirk suspiciously before he rolls his eyes.

“Quit fighting, kids. We're nearly there.”

He doesn't say another word until they were climbing out of the car, and he thrusts the camera bag at her.

“You wanted it, you carry it,” Gibbs grunts. “And remind me to get you a copy of the rules, too. I'd be thinking about number ten if I were you.”

It's quite the warning, she discovers later.

*

McGee's used to whizkids. He _was_ one, and had spent most of high school and all of college hanging out with the smartest of the smart. Even so, he's never met anyone quite like Veronica Mars.

It's not just that she's hot. (She is. Blisteringly so. It's distracting, so he tries not to think about it.) It's more that she's sharp, like a diamond. Brilliant and beautiful, but cold, and hard. Hard to see, too, when the image is so dazzling.

Right now, she's completely focused on the documenting the site, and – he's done this a time or two. He's a fully trained federal agent, with an unparalleled knowledge of technology and procedure, but next to her? He sucks. She's shooting from angles that would never occur to him; close-ups of material that he would have thought was innocuous, wide angle shots of the views and the approaches and all the lines of sight.

Normally, Gibbs would be asking for this shot or that shot, but he just watches her, and every now and then, something inscrutable flashes across his face. He's impressed, McGee figures, but he doesn't want to be, for some reason. He's worried, too.

Rule number ten? Probably. Of all Gibbs' rules, not being personally involved with a case was right up there, and a past sexual relationship with a suspect is too many kinds of personally involved. Honestly, though – what could she have done? Pretended she didn't know the guy? Excused herself from the case because she went through a bad boy phase in high school? McGee snorts in disgust. It'd be their loss – she's already the best damn crime scene photographer they've had, and it's only her second freaking day.

NCIS might not take interns, but someone knew they needed to take this one, and they were right.

“Tony?”

Ziva startles him when she materialises at his elbow, and follows his gaze to the girl working her way around the periphery of the scene.

“My photographs are not out of focus,” she huffs, but she sounds less than outraged. “But she is very good with the camera, no?”

“Way good,” he agrees, without taking his eyes off her. “I've been watching her. She uses that camera like Abby uses Major MassSpec, or I can use code. It's like … an extension of her brain.” He breaks off, embarrassed by the fanboy gushing, but Ziva seems to like the analogy.

“Me and weapons, Tony and his charm, Gibbs and his rules,” she chortles, then grows serious.

“Veronica is going to have some trouble with the rules,” she points out needlessly. “She and Navarro are definitely involved.”

“Were,” he reminds her.

Ziva raises her eyebrows and pins him with sceptical brown eyes.

“Are,” she says. “Whatever they had, it's not over. There are some people you can never walk away from, no matter how bad they are for you,” she sighs, and he knows the sorrow isn't for Veronica.

He slings his arm over her shoulder and guides her back towards the vehicle.

“She's not the only one with an eye for the undercurrents, is she, Ms Badass?”

Ziva gives him the evil eye and refuses to look at Tony as he strides across the clearing towards them.

*

She's grotty and hanging out for a shower after a twelve-hour day when she finds it under her doormat. She'd expected a text, or an email, but instead, he chooses old fashioned stalking, and leaves the welcome mat of her sublet slightly askew to mark his passage.

The envelope is a thin rectangle of faux-fancy paper, and there's only one thing inside. A key, and a small engraved disc – Camelot Motel, it says. No 8. She laughs out loud, then unlocks her own door and heads straight for Google.

Washington Square. $52 a night. It'll probably be crawling with vermin and overrun with lowlife, but she knows she's going, and maybe even more than once. She knows he's going to kiss her, and she's going to let him, and minutes after that, nothing about the motel room will matter.

So she's going to make sure she gets the information she needs first.

*

Veronica unlocks the door just as he is hooking into the first container of takeout. He nearly spills kung po chicken all over the bed in his need to get to her.

She's here. She's fucking _real_. She's warm in his arms and her skin smells like citrus, and he just wants to bite down until she's sweet under his tongue. “Eli,” she breathes, and the lips he still sees in his dreams are pressing small kisses to his hands and his face and his eyelids and he needs to fuck her _now._

He's already undone the top button of her jeans when she stumbles backwards, mouth working as she searches for words. He smirks, and then she slays him.

“No.” She throws up a hand, insistent. “Business first. And then ...” she smiles, and there she is, the flirtatious girl he remembers. “Getting down to business.”

He wonders for a minute if that's all it is for her, the sex. It's not, for him. He doesn't think with his cock, and wouldn't be here if that was all it was – he could leave now, he thinks, and be satisfied. Fucking aching, yes, but the need to see her secret smile, to show his scars, to live in her eyes – satisfied. She sees him, Veronica Mars, and allows him to see her. It's the purest relationship in his life.

But, fuck, he wants to do _dirty_ things to her.

“Talk,” he growls, dropping down into the chair at the tiny kitchen table.

“My line, chico. You were lying through your teeth yesterday. Wanna tell me what's really going on?”

He hesitates, and reviews the facts as he knows them. The guy's dead, and it's probably because someone in the operation is pissed off. He hadn't signed on for this, and if it was all some power grab, or a double-cross, they could come gunning for him next. Be helpful if he knew who the fuck they were. But he guesses that's Veronica's job now.

“Let's just say I'm not in Washington to work in the garage. I am working on cars, though,” he started, looking her in the eye.

“Shit. I'm gonna need to sit down for this, aren't I.” She drops into the chair next to him, laying her forehead on the table. “Let me guess. The family business?”

“Kinda. But we've expanded. My tio Angel was in the Marines, you know? Few of his old shipmates, they come to him if they need a car. So … we started taking cars to them on the base in SD. Lots'a cars.”

He doesn't need to explain the damn cars are so hot they're practically smoking, and she doesn't need to know that he's created the biggest clearing house for stolen cars in southern California.

“So things are moving nicely out of SD, but we're limited to two or three cars in each shipment, because too many doesn't look good for my boys. And I've got customers screaming down south, so we need another outlet. And my cousin Julio has the yard over here, so …” he shrugs, knowing that Veronica Mars is more than capable to filling in the blanks.

She groans, and bangs her forehead on the desk twice, before straightening up and swinging her body to face his.

“So. The dead guy, Hernandez. How do you know him?”

“Didn't know him at all. I'd been putting a few feelers out, his name had come up, I asked for an intro.”

“Fernando Teixeira?”

“Yup. Works in my cousin's yard, went to school with your dead guy. Honestly, V, I think you're barking up the wrong tree here. They were pretty friendly.”

Which, if he thinks about it, makes him the prime suspect. “But I guess you can never know ...”

She rolls her eyes at him and asks the one fucking question he doesn't want to answer.

“So, who's stealing all these cars? You have to be in bed with someone.”

“In about two minutes? I sure am hoping,” he drawls, and prays she'll take him up on it. He needs her tongue in his mouth, soon, or he'll succumb to this mad urge to tell the truth.

She simply stares at him, eyebrows raised in expectation.

“VCV, for us. Fernando's got a brother high up in MS-13, so I was gonna be talking with them. But I wanted to get the sailor locked in before talking to anyone else – can't be about that, chica.”

“Well, if you say so … but the thing is? I grew up in this nice little town called Neptune, and someone really smart taught me that when it comes to criminals? No such thing as coincidence, is there baby?” she grits out, pounding his chest with her fist in frustration.

She stills then, anger leaching from her body as the thought takes her. He watches her forehead crease and her eyes narrow as she turns over the idea, and despises himself for wanting her so much. Then her thumb brushes his collar bone in an absent-minded tease, and he can't help but to move into it, twisting his body to face hers fully, trapping her knees between his.

He shrugs as she looks up in question, and traces down the side of her face with one finger. “Just making sure you can see me, chica. So you know I'm not lying.”

V scoffs, but she doesn't move away. “Okay, then, talk to me. So Hernandez ends up dead. Is it something to do with this, or could it be something else?”

His gut is telling him something's gone wrong with the deal, but he hasn't seen or heard anything to make him think that. Just – he knows these people. They're not beyond killing a dude. And the operation in DC seems a lot shakier than his end of things.

“Can't be sure. But it's probably this. Just not sure how,” he frowns.

“But you had nothing to do with his death? Just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

He nods, annoyed that she even needs to ask.

“Swear it to me, Eli. On your Abuela's grave.”

He growls into her face, and leans forward to grab the chair either side of her narrow shoulders.

“Would you even believe me? I'm just a no-account ex-con who'd sell his abuela to make some money, chica. Murder's not that big a stretch,” he sneers, and shakes the chair in frustration. He's trying to scare her, he realises. She's got some catching up to do, and number one fact about the new Weevil? He's a criminal, who handles some bad shit, and deals with even badder people. (He may not have killed this guy, but he's still a murderer.)

She needs to be fucking scared of him. Because she has to be the one to walk away – God knows he never will.

*

Her teeth clatter together and her hair is all over her face, and he looks so angry that she just has to close her eyes. She's not scared, exactly, but she's sad to doubt him, and angry at the situation they've found themselves in. And he's surrounding her with muscles and ink and caramel coloured skin, and, well. Hello downfall.

He looks a little bit broken when she opens her eyes, and she can see the apology lurking in his. She doesn't want sorry, she realises. She wants him to shake her again, to make her feel his pain, to punish her for abandoning him. So she turns her head and bites down hard, her teeth worrying the muscle of his bicep even as her tongues laves it better.

She's on her back in the middle of the badly-sprung bed before she can blink, pushing her jeans down and wriggling out of her panties as he drops his jeans and whips off the black wifebeater. She wants a moment to just look at him, but he's already rolling on a condom, and licking his way up her body.

Her vision goes fuzzy as he reminds her of exactly how good they were together, and she tells herself that it's this, the hot madness, _this_ is why she's never been able to leave him behind. (She lets him steal her mind, so she doesn't have to think about the other things he makes her feel.)

Purely physical, she gasps to herself as he throws her legs over his shoulders and applies himself to obliterating her, one burst of pleasure at a time. It's just because he's so good at this, her brain babbles. So talented, so fucking _into_ this ...

“O-o-o-r-r-r-r ...”

He lifts his head and quirks a brow in question. “Really, Mars? You wanna talk right _now_?”

She blushes, feeling obliged to finish the thought. “Oral fixation. Last time. We talked about your oral fixation.”

His laughter rings around the room and he crawls up further to give her a slow, wet kiss. “Nah, baby. Ain't your mouth I'm fixated on, remember? Just taste so _good_ , chica,” he moans, turning his head to breathe into her ear. “I could eat you all fucking night.”

And it's not that she wants to argue, but he's huge and hard in the vee of her thighs and it's reminding her of everything else she's missed, while he was in prison, or wasting time with all those boys who simply weren't him.

“Or...”

“I could fuck you into next week?”

“Hmm. I think I'll take – door number two! With an option on the other for later.”

“Sounds like the price is finally fucking right,” he growls, sliding into her slowly, and then stroking back and forth with agonising gentleness. It's torture, and her moan is so needy and desperate, she'd be embarrassed if she could manage to care. Instead, she slams her hips up to meet his and sinks her fingernails into the globes of his ass.

“Make love to me later, chico. Fuck me now.”

He just grins before stilling his hips altogether to concentrate on teasing her nipples with long swipes of his tongue.

Turns out, they both like it better when she begs.

*

Gibbs starts the car just after midnight, his lights making a brilliant arc over the bilious pink door he's been staring at for six hours. He guesses anyone deluded enough to call a roach motel the Camelot was entitled to paint the place Peptobismol pink. He just wishes they'd invested a bit more in curtaining, because he needs to scour his brain of the sight of his angelic-looking intern pressed up against the glass as her lover brought her off with his tongue.

He felt dirty, and it had nothing to do with the young couple's impressively athletic sex life. It was Navarro he had followed, but he'd known right from the start who he was looking for. This tryst wouldn't bring them any closer to catching a sailor's murderer, or even clear him of suspicion. All it told him was that Veronica Mars had chosen her past over her future, and couldn't be trusted. That's all the answer he needs to Vance's already pointed questions.

Disappointment churns in his gut, but the irony of it makes him shake his head. More fool him for being disappointed when the intern he never wanted lets him down.

He's already thinking of how best to deal with the situation, and it doesn't occur to him to look back as he accelerates away from the parking lot. Even if he had, there was nothing remarkable about the second car that slipped into his carspace, directly opposite the door to Navarro's room. Nothing except the nondescript man with the long telephoto lens, aimed directly at door number 8.

***


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's the first intern they've ever had. It's the first time anyone has let her near a real federal case. And her chief suspect is the reason she made it out of high school alive. Life's a bitch, Veronica Mars. Then you have to grow up and figure out how to live.

**Chapter Five**   


  


“You're off the case.”

Gibbs has an impressive poker face, Veronica thinks idly as she gropes for control. He's watching her react, waiting for anger or hurt, and it's like looking at a store mannequin. She models herself on that, seeks the same blankness, and actually manages to be polite.

“May I ask why?”

He flicks a piece of paper onto the desk in front of her, and it's a long, badly typed list of numbered sentences. Rules, she realises.

“Number 10. You broke it.”

She frowns and leans forward to read the stupid rule that's keeping her off Weevil's case.

“Never get … personally involved on a case.” Her eyes flick up to his, and they're less opaque now. Accusing. He knows what she did last night. He knows what she did _all_ night.

She'd want to blush, if she wasn't so busy trying not to panic.

A long breath in through her nose helps her find some semblance of calm. They had every right to follow him. He was an obviously cagey suspect in an ongoing murder investigation – they'd be negligent _not_ to follow him. (Anybody else and she would have suggested it.) But instead … instead ...

Her stupidity is staring her in the face, and for a moment, Veronica is terrified she has thrown it all away. Her entire future, for a man can't even admit she loves.

Not very badass. Not very Veronica Mars at all. So she does what she does best.

Attacks.

“I'll accept that perhaps I'm … compromised on the Hernandez case. I'm sure there are other things around here that you can find for me to do,” she says steadily, looking Gibbs in the eye. He looks wary for a moment, and then decides to bite.

“And what was the reason I'd want to keep you around?”

She pushes the shame down, and focuses on the lowest common denominator. She has information. They need it.

“Nothing I tell you could be used in court, of course. Those admissibility rules, you know ...”

Gibbs tenses, his mouth pulling at the corner in what looks like disgust.

“Go on,” he barks.

“Weevil is in town looking to set up a deal. Hot cars. Apparently no one checks the hold of a Navy ship too carefully.”

“Hernandez?”

“They'd met for the first time that night. Teixeira set up the meet. He's involved with one of the big gangs here – MS-13?”

Gibbs groans, and scrubs his hands over his head.

“MS-13 steals the cars, and Hernandez ships them out.”

Veronica nods. “Yup. That's it. Am I filing?”

His lips set into a thin line, as if she is forcing him to swallow cyanide. Blackmail, her Dad had said once, was the most hateful crime because it muddied the hands of criminal and victim alike.

“One more question,” Gibbs says.

“Do you think he did it?”

She stills, and her mind screams. It's her most basic thought process, that weighing of likelihood and opportunity, motive and evidence. She hadn't let herself near it, she realises. She didn't want to know.

The words stick in her throat, but she needs to force them out.

“I don't know. He's … capable, given the right motive.” She remembers Weevil's face, as he contemplated the chances of justice for Felix, and later, when he lifted the hair away from her neckline to see the mark of the Hearst rapist. “It'd have to be personal, though. Not just money.”

“Most people think money is plenty personal.”

“Not Weevil. Not for murder.”

She sags with relief, thankful to Gibbs for forcing her to ask the question. And realising she's back in familiar territory, working a murder case from afar.

Fuck rule number 10.

*

He owes it to Teixeira to give him a heads-up about the investigation. He's not sure how well pillow talk holds up in court, but it's been two days now, and soon the Feds are gonna come knocking. That means the Maratrucha won't be far behind, and that's not a conversation he wants to be responsible for.

Weevil swears as he stumbles over the tiny push-cart on the little porch, and weaves his way around an assortment of baby toys. He'd known the guy five minutes when Teixeira first pulled out pictures of his boy; a little Michelin Man who was the smartest kid on the planet according to his papa. Shame he didn't love the kid enough to stay away from the life, Weevil thinks. Glass houses and fucking stones, but at least he doesn't have a family to worry about.

He bangs his fist on the door a couple of times, then does so again. There's a wailing inside that's sawing at his eardrums – kid's inherited a good set of lungs, that's for sure. Weevil waits impatiently on the doorstep, willing someone just to pick up the damn kid already, then starts to wonder where the hell Fernando and his woman are. Shouldn't take this long to answer a fucking door.

It's the sick feeling in his stomach that makes him pop the lock and push forward into the hall beyond. He finds them at the kitchen table, blood pooling around the remains of breakfast and spilling onto scarred linoleum below. Teixeira is dead – there's nothing left of his skull – and his girl is moaning quietly as her blood pumps slowly from the hole in her gut.

His fingers are shaking as he dials 911, frantically searching the house for something to stop the blood. He finds a white towel on the floor of the bathroom, and sprints back into the kitchen to wrap it around her abdomen and watch it turn pink.

“Mi hijo. Mi hijo,” she cries as she registers his presence, and he begins to pray. For the baby, the poor screaming kid who's lost his mama, but for this girl too, because fuck, she can't be more than 18.

“Calmate, calmate, chica,” he finds himself babbling. “Su hijo duerme. Que esta el salvo. Que esta sonando,” he croons. The words of the Mass have flown out of his head, so he starts on the Rosary: “Santa Maria de Madre de Dios, rueda por los pecadores ...” He's leaning over her, and his mother's cross has slipped free of his shirt to dangle in her face.

She lifts her hand to grasp it, wrapping it in her palm and bringing it to her lips. “Jesus de Christo,” she breathes, and her eyes flutter shut. The towel is sodden, now, almost black. The colour of his soul, Eli thinks, as he tries to pry his cross free of her rapidly stiffening fingers.

He's just about got it when a car screeches onto the tiny lawn and he yanks his head up to see who it is. The chain breaks, but he's beyond caring as four men covered in Maratrucha ink roll out of the car. One is toting a submachine gun, and the other three are waving handguns about. He needs to be gone.

*

“Got a call from the Maryland PD. Teixeira's dead. His girlfriend, too.”

Ziva is gathering her gear when Gibbs shakes his head, and nods in the direction of Veronica Mars. She glares at him but he simply raises his eyebrows before she decides to sit back down. Fine. She'll babysit. But if he's expecting some sort of female bonding – he would have been better off choosing McGee or Tony.

Veronica had never been a particularly open person, but since Gibbs had taken her off Navarro's case, she'd become prickly and almost hostile. Embarrassed, obviously, that her prospective team mates had been advised of her disgrace, but also frustrated and bored.

She doesn't look bored any more, Ziva notes cynically. Veronica Mars is no fool, and she knows that Teixeira was second on a very short list of suspects for the murder of Hernandez. Now, Navarro has two sets of questions to answer, and Veronica is locked on desk duty, unable to do a damn thing about it.

If she had a tail, she'd be swishing it, Ziva thinks, biting down on a smile.

“Not fair that you should have to stay with me,” the blonde throws over her shoulder as she prowls past. “Sorry.”

“I suspect we are supposed to be painting our nails, or braiding each other's hair,” Ziva says wryly.

Veronica swings around with a look of disbelief, and this time, Ziva does laugh.

“Yes, really! I, apparently, possess an X chromosome therefore am best able to comfort you in your time of anxiety.”

“No way!”

“Yes, way, as Tony is so fond of saying. But no, I am not good at either of those things. Or comforting in general. I tend to believe 'you have your bed, so sleep in it'.”

Veronica's poker face dissolves into a mocking grin. “Well, technically, it wasn't my bed, but, yanno. Guilty. Hand me a big red A.”

Ziva frowns. “You can laugh about it, or you can figure out a way to get yourself out of this mess. In my experience, if you break Gibbs' rules, you need to show that they didn't apply to you in the first place. Show him that having a personal connection with the case can be an advantage rather than a liability.”

“My personal connection is looking more like the murderer every day!”

“So? Use that,” Ziva shrugs, and tries not to think about how things had ended when it had been her own life caught in the wheels of justice.

*

“Where is the _fucking_ blood?”

Gibbs' curse hangs in the air as McGee and Tony shoot each other frazzled looks, silently agreeing to one last search of the small clapboard house. It was wrong, all wrong, and Gibbs – calm, courteous Gibbs, who never cursed – was snarling at the local LEOs as if they'd purposely desecrated his scene.

An increasingly irate brunette with spectacular legs and sloping Spanish eyes was about to forget her manners, Tony realises, and charges in to the rescue.

“Boss. They're telling us it was exactly like this when they arrived. Even the paramedics say the same – two bodies, hardly any blood, and the little boy screeching his head off in the back. No footprints, hardly any fibres, and kitchen so clean you'd be scared to eat in it.”

“Scene's too clean,” Gibbs huffs. “Again,” Tony and McGee chorus.

“With the exception of one very significant item, I would agree,” Ducky pronounces, unfolding his hand.

“A crucifix. It was in the female victim's hand, and the chain is broken, as if it came from around someone's neck. And Miss Orellena's fingers show some abnormal lividity, as if someone had been wrenching at them post-mortem.”

“Trying to get it back?”

“Possibly, yes. Trying to get it back.”

“Anything on it?”

“No names at all, simply a date. 21/03/1991. Probably a date of death, given the symbolism, but there's no way of being sure,” Ducky grimaces.

“Yes, there is. Find the owner,” Gibbs mutters, his vehemence causing Ducky to blink.

“Yes, indeed, Jethro. He or she was certainly here when this poor girl died, so if nothing else, is guilty of leaving the scene.”

“So, who called the paramedics? Didn't they get here first?”

The tall Latina moves closer to answer his question, introducing herself as Trini Chavez, a detective with the Metropolitan Police Department. “Yes, that's correct. Emergency services took the call at 10.09am, reporting one dead, one dying at this address. Male caller, rang off quickly and wouldn't leave his name. Number is out of service since.”

“You pull the recording yet?” Gibbs snaps, and Chavez has quite clearly had enough.

“No, Agent Gibbs, I have not. I have been here, improperly attending to your scene, I gather. I'll leave it your team to contact Emergency Services as I'm obviously holding you up. Now, I'm sure there are other crimes occuring in the City that might actually benefit from my attention. If you'll excuse me,” Detective Chavez offers Gibbs a sardonic salute and stalks away.

Tony catches her at the curb, just as she is unlocking the door to her car. “Detective!”

“Agent … I'm sorry, Agent Gibbs didn't think to introduce us. Strangely.”

“DiNozzo, Tony DiNozzo. Look, Chavez. Just wanted to say,” Tony leans closer, and drops his voice. “Sorry. For Gibbs. He's not normally like this, and he doesn't mean it personally. Or professionally. Whatever.”

Chavez looks sceptical, but slightly mollified. “I wondered. I mean, we've all heard of NCIS, and I figured if the boss was so hard to work with, it'd be public knowledge. Assumed it must have been something about me.”

“No! No. Nothing like that. It's the case. We've got a few issues of our own with the case. Any help you guys can offer at all – it's appreciated. Really.”

Chavez waves him off with a relieved smile, and Tony turns to return to the house. Gorgeous woman, he's thinking, and probably smart, too. His smile vanishes as he realises he didn't flirt with her, not even a little. Let alone get her number, or ask her out.

He must be slipping, he thinks desperately. (You didn't even want to, self-knowledge whispers.) Time to get a clue, Tony, his Freudian ego taunts, and it's downright _offensive_ that it sounds just like Veronica Mars.

*

McGee's on camera duty today, and he's out in the street, shooting north and south, before it occurs to him. He's trying to think like Veronica Mars. He's already taken close to one hundred photos, and just the thought of looking through them all is exhausting.

She's right, though. There's more than just one scene – there's a hundred of them. Where someone parked. Where they got out of the car. Where they (or someone else) flicked a cigarette butt to the curb, or slipped on the wet grass. Where someone stepped on a sad-looking monkey and left a half footprint over his woebegone face.

Tim signals for an evidence bag and carefully seals Mr Monkey away, before resuming his trek with the camera. He's already worked through every room in the house before heading to the street, and now he exits through the back door, turning to photograph the door itself, and the multiplicity of muddy bootprints on the steps. Someone here had made a lot of trips to the back garden, he can see, the large vegetable patch groaning with corn, broccoli, lettuces and what he thinks might be carrots. There's a gap in the fence, leading to the garden behind, and something makes him document it, wide-angle, then zoom in tight.

The fibres are clinging to the angled board, just a few threads of black cotton that he takes care to catch in sharp focus. Then he sees the dark spot next to it – browny red, just a small blotch. Blood, he'll wager, and he finds a second pool, then spots a third as he looks into the yard beyond. Major MassSpec will have lots to say about this, and Tim's eyes narrow at the prospect of knowing for sure who it is they're chasing.

*

When the elevator doors slide open, Ziva has Veronica pinned to the floor in a headlock. The older woman is deathly capable in more combat arts than Veronica knew existed, and as she's also discovering, is vastly stubborn. “Do. You. Think. You. Need. To. Learn?” Ziva grits out, regardless of their sudden audience, and Veronica rolls her eyes before tapping out the way she's been taught.

“Yes, Ziva, some lessons in jujitsu would be … useful, thank you,” Veronica says dutifully as she rises to her feet. “Because I certainly haven't had my fill of public humiliation for the week.”

DiNozzo's bark of laughter drawns a glare from Gibbs, who orders them back to their desks with a simple flick of his head.“Mars. You can start going through all the images once McGee uploads them to the server. Ziva, Tony – head out again and bring in Navarro. McGee, do the photo thing and then get down in the lab with Abs and see what you can do with the DNA samples. And the cross – get her to start a metals analysis or something.”

“Cross?”

“You're not working the physical evidence, Mars. If you weren't so damn good at it I wouldn't even be letting you near the photos.”

“But you mentioned a cross. A crucifix?”

Something in her voice – surely not a tremor, certainly not a sob – draws every eye in the room. Gibbs unlocks the evidence bag without further argument, and carefully extracts the appropriate baggie. The unadorned simplicity is so immediately familiar, Veronica forgets to breathe.

“The date on the back?”

She closes her eyes, and prays for her fate to change. To not have to do this. For an option that would at least leave her some faith in her fellow human beings. Some ability to trust another person. Her ability not to poison everything she loves.

“The date of his mother's death. March 21, 1991. Eli was two.”

Gibbs tucks the evidence bag back into the satchel, and then steps forward to offer her an awkward hug-pat. “Good job. You've saved us a lot of time. Stopped this from escalating.”

She tries to enjoy the knowledge that she has done the right thing, but it tastes like ashes in her mouth. Something in his face sympathises, but federal agents must be limited to one moment of mercy per day – he steps away, and sends her back to her desk with a nod. But maybe it is a mercy, she considers. Maybe he knows how you can drown in the details of a crime scene and never have to lift your head away to think about the crime.

“McGee should have those photos ready for you now, Mars. Get to work.”

He hadn't even quit the Bullpen before he was the phone to Legal, requesting an arrest warrant for one Eli Antonio Navarro.

***


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's the first intern they've ever had. It's the first time anyone has let her near a real federal case. And her chief suspect is the reason she made it out of high school alive. Life's a bitch, Veronica Mars. Then you have to grow up and figure out how to live.

**Chapter Six**

He made it nearly two miles before he had to stop and rest his leg. The pain had been so intense, at first he had thought he'd caught a stray bullet. Idiots were certainly wasteful enough, because firing after him through the windows of the house like that? So much stupid.

As his bolt slowed to a jog and then to a shuffle, he started zigzagging through the neighbourhood looking for somewhere to lay low for a while. He had no illusions that he was a wanted man, but it wasn't NCIS or the local cops that had him worried. MS-13 had spies in every street in the barrio, and no such thing as due process. If they catch wind of him, he'll be dead within the day.

Weevil keeps his head down and hood up as he ambles through the increasingly dilapidated streets. He knows he's found his refuge when he sees the police tape; half burnt-out, the house will still have running water, and if his luck is in, food. He slides down the border fence and stumbles over a small gate into the back yard, before pushing his way in through an already busted window.

One room is untouched by the fire, and he nearly throws himself onto the bed in relief. His leg reminds him not to – he doesn't want to sleep in bloodstained sheets, and he doesn't want to wake up to a raging infection. He strips, then turns his attention to the long gash that runs from just above his knee, full to his ankle. He hopes the damn nail wasn't rusty, because hope is all he has on hand just now.

He strips naked and then decides it's time to discover the fate of the shower. He finds roof timbers still poised to fall into the tub, and floor unsteady on its footings, so decides to forego that option. A basin full in the kitchen sink is all the washing he's gonna get.

Minutes later, he's asleep, too desperately tired to worry about anything. That will come tomorrow, when he has nothing to do but stare at four walls, and plot, and plan, and think of all the ways it can go wrong.

And her. Always of her.

*

“It's his blood, Veronica. A lot of it, on the fence at the back of the property. He's hurt.”

She knows what they're asking. Gibbs is his usual, blank self, supplying all the rope she needs to hang herself with. DiNozzo is more transparent, waiting for her to go all gushing girlfriend.

She's never been his girlfriend, she wants to yell. They've never been able to have that.

Veronica presses next on the photo queue, instead. Insert evidence number. Description. Notes. Next.

“If he's innocent, he needs to come in soon. Running makes him look guilty.”

Circumstantial, her brain is screaming. His cross places him at the scene. His blood marks where he fled. There's nothing connecting those points, no evidence from the corpses that suggests anything other than the fact that Eli Navarro was there.

(Evidence number. Description. Notes. Next.)

But he _was_ there. That's good enough to convict him in any court in the country. A business deal gone sour, the prosecutor will argue. Three victims of Navarro's greed – first Hernandez, then Teixeira and Orellana. Slaughtered by a clever, cunning criminal, so charming he was able to lead the investigation away from the truth by seducing NCIS' gullible young intern.

She grits her teeth and clicks 'next' so hard her fingers hurt.

You know, except for the part where she was seduced. Or that he led the investigation away. Or that she could believe greed was anywhere in Eli Navarro's set of motivations, then or now. Is she simply failing to see the bias that could lead her to ignore damning facts? Is she deluding herself, refusing to accept that prison has changed him? She has to allow the fact that it's possible. She has to accept that he might have done this, Veronica lectures herself.

“He'll be somewhere isolated or abandoned. By himself, so no one else can get hurt. Probably not too far from the crime scene. Somewhere he can stay put for a day or so, let things die down.”

Tony grins like a proud uncle and Veronica wants to spit in his face. Gibbs simply nods and walks away to make the call. She has given the uniforms something to focus on, now, and he's laying down the law, making it clear he wants NCIS to lead on the arrest. They have two accredited sharpshooters, he snaps, and Veronica's pulse hammers with panic.

She forces herself to breathe through her nose, and focuses on the image. The street, outside Teixeira's house this morning. Two traffic cones, guarding an empty space in front of the house, as they wait for the arrival of the medical examiner's van. The grass, in front, already trampled and full of footprints, as if the ME had already been and gone.

Too many footprints, she notes, and clicks next.

(Not looking for the real killer. Not looking for any sort of sign at all.)

*

She's tying him in knots, this girl, moving above him so hot, so good, her long, pale hair falling around them like a tent, like a veil between the worlds, between out there and in here, and him and V and the rest of fucking Neptune. Fuck. Fuck, it's so good, he doesn't want it to end, it can't end, it can't, even though the world's rushing in, the door splintering and the room full of people, full of noise. His body is still throbbing and he knows he's got a smile on his face despite the fact there's cops every-fucking-where and that's a whole shitload of guns, pointing straight at him.

Weevil pushes himself to upright in the bed, and wonders why that's hard, why the room's moving so much, and why his eyes refuse to focus properly. There's a film of sweat that even dream-Veronica can't be responsible for, and his brain won't seem to work, won't seem to do anything than let him goggle at them, ten, maybe fifteen cops, all yelling, the fuckers.

He's almost relieved when he spots the dynamic duo in their midst, Agent Sexy snapping angrily at the others and Agent Smooth following in her wake as she strides forward, obviously in charge.

“Mr Navarro. You are under arrest. Please put your hands up. Or the idiots might shoot you.”

He wants to tell her he's trying, but the words sound like he's blowing bubbles underwater, and the pain in his head is dragging him down, back to blackness and bliss and he hopes to God, Veronica.

Ziva jumps in to support him as Navarro slides sideways. His skin is hot to the touch, and the way his eyes roll back in his head make it clear their quarry has passed out.

“Somebody call an ambulance. He is unconscious,” she yells, and then flips back the sheet, looking for the cause of his condition. His nudity is far from unremarkable, but the oozing wound on his calf smells foul and is surrounded by a grotesque tracery of fiery red blood vessels. “Blood poisoning, from an infected wound,” she diagnoses, as Tony relays the information to 911.

The bulk of the uniforms drift away as Ziva and Tony wait for the ambulance to arrive; most of the officers had been churlish, almost, as if deprived of a show. She wants to shake them, these poor, bored beat cops, so obviously hoping for a shootout with the young gangster. Send them to Gaza for a week, or to Africa. Somewhere where they'll learn something about the value of human life.

She's having difficulty remembering this man has no such respect, as he moans and whimpers, and babbles his way through scraps of conversation. He seems almost lucid for a moment, blinking as he gazes up at her, and then breaking into a wickedly intimate smile. “Veronicita,” he purrs, and then his eyes close again, and Ziva is left gaping in surprise.

“Wonder what it was like, between them,” Tony asks from the other side of the ambulance, and it's not salacious or vile like she would expect, but almost tender. “Rebel Without a Cause, the good girl helping the misunderstood bad boy turn over a new leaf? Or a little more Bonnie and Clyde?”

“Or maybe they're just two people, with something between them, but there's something in the way. There's always something in the way, and now, it's too late,” Ziva says, and are those tears welling in the corners of her eyes? Why?

“It's never too late, Ziva. Not when it's real. It doesn't go away,” Tony insists, his pale eyes steady on her dark ones. That's why, she realises. Over-identification, the analysts would call it.

And the dilemma is as true for them as it is for the younger couple, she accepts sadly.

“Things need to change, Tony. Before anyone can move forward, things need to change,” she says, but she slips her hand into his anyway. Stolen moments are all they have, for now, but they're together, on the same team, and she's never been more thankful for that.

*

“It makes no sense!”

McGee looks up at Veronica's explosion, and smiles sympathetically. She's been staring at the crime scene photos for close to four hours now, and their chief suspect – who may or may not be her boyfriend – is unconscious in the hospital just down the street.

Her work ethic is remarkable, really.

“What's the problem?”

“These scenes. Both bloody murders – one guy beaten and shot, and two people shot to death, one of whom probably bled out. But in both cases – hardly any blood. How can that happen?”

“It's like – my boyfriend's place, freshman year. Bigggg party. The penthouse was completely trashed, yet the next day, we go out for lunch and when we get back, all the broken glass is swept up, all the vomit's gone, all the paintings are hanging straight again. No sign anything had happened at all.”

“So ... you're saying? They had a party?”

Veronica leaps to her feet. “No. They had help. Professional help. Crime scene cleaners – had to be. Called in to clean the scene before anyone else got there.”

McGee swallows, immediately minded of Occam's Razor. She's right. It's the simplest explanation. He's already dialling Gibbs' phone, and tapping Abby an email with his other hand. They need help – and half the team is at Eli Navarro's bedside right now.

“How many cleaning companies can do crime scene cleanup in the Washington area anyway? It's got to be pretty specialised, right – special chemicals, special procedures?”

“Yeah, so there's only a few that actually do the work fulltime. But a lot of the big commercial cleaners do crime scene when needed. The clients are mostly insurance companies, big landlords, sometimes the City if it's a public building,” McGee explains.

“So, we need a list of companies. What are we cross-checking it with, though? Would they come back to the same scene twice? What about gang links? Could they be working for MS-13? Someone else?”

McGee's wondering the same, and thinking 'Navarro?' even if he doesn't want to say it to her face. The question – a whole lot of questions, in fact - will have to be asked at some point, and surely she has to know that.

“Guess the person to start with is Navarro. Once he gains consciousness,” he ventures, and is encouraged when she nods. Whatever their situation, Veronica Mars isn't hiding from the truth, and he doesn't realise how relieved he is until he lets out a long hiss of tension. He's acting like she's one of them, he realises with a shock. She _is_ one of them.

His phone rings then, and he grabs it to share the good news with Gibbs.

“Veronica's made a breakthrough, but we need to talk to Navarro. Any luck there?”

“Nah, kid's still unconscious. Could be a day or so before the antibiotics kick in. What are you two up to?”

“Crime scene cleaners, boss. They're getting cleaners in. We just have to figure out which cleaner, and why, and who's hiring them.”

Gibbs grunts in approval, then chuckles drily. “Works for me. Except for the part where you haven't figured it all out, yet. Get on with it – I'll send Ziva and Tony back when I get there, and be back myself as soon as I've sorted out a detail for Navarro. Good work, both of you.”

*

He opens his eyes again, and Veronica is in the room. It's not _his_ Veronica, though, all warm skin, bedroom eyes and wandering hands – it's bitch Veronica, with the blank face and the hard eyes and the uncanny way of making him answer any fucking question she wants to ask. Weevil sighs, and braces himself for an interrogation.

Her new boss is there too, sitting in a chair next to his bed. He speaks first, as if he's in charge of this shindig. Weevil figures he'll learn soon enough.

“Welcome back, Mr Navarro. We've got some questions we'd like to ask you, if you're up to answering them.”

He drops his head back into the pillow, turning it away from them. She's poisoning his dream, this cold girl with calculation in her eyes. She's dragging him back to reality, where Veronica Mars doesn't belong to him, and never really did.

“It's important, Weevil. We need to know what you know.” Her voice is soft, and it sounds so much like dream Veronica, it hurts. He forgets, sometimes, that when she's cool and calm and professional, she's more Veronica than ever. Sexier, even. Loving that girl – it's hard, because he wants to love her and hate her for the very same things.

They both need hate to win, he tells himself.

“I'm done answering Veronica's questions. I've been answering them all of my fuckin' adult life. I've never fucking lied to you and it was never the fuck good enough, so I ask you V, why should I bother? Why should I bother now, when it's written all over your face that you think I killed those people? That girl, who looks just like Ophelia's gonna look in a few years? Poor Fernando fucking Teixeira, who's too weak to get out of the life even though he's got a girl and a baby waiting for him every night? Fuck, V. Just – no. I'm done.”

She gazes at him with aquamarine eyes, blue tilting towards green the way they always do in his dreams, and asks him to trust her. Fuck that – assumes he will. And then presses record on her fancy phone.

“Mr Navarro. Could you please describe the scene you encountered at Fernando Teixeira's house on the morning of June second?”

He frowns. They know what he found. Two dead bodies. An ocean of blood. A carful of fucking gangsters, keen to fill him with lead.

It's just the tiniest thing, more a signal than a head tilt, but he catches the swing of her hair and the lightning fast passage of her forefinger over her lips. Please, she's saying. Play along.

“Uh, I went over early, wanting to warn 'em they'd be getting a visit from you lot, actually. 'Bout eightish, maybe? Anyhow, I knocked on the door a few times, and couldn't hear anything, but the car was in the driveway, and I could hear the kid yelling out the back, you know? So I went inside anyway. And they were right there, sitting at the kitchen table.”

He shook his head to clear the image, as useful as it might have been. Some things are impossible to forget, and he'd rather not have that picture burned into his retinas in technicolour. He can still smell the blood, and hear the woman's last, tortured gasps, and feel the bite of being completely, utterly useless.

“Uh, Teixeira was dead. His brains were splattered all over the wall, you know? Half his head was gone. The girl, though … oh God, she was still alive, sitting in this huge fucking pool of blood that covered half the table and the chair and the floor ...” Weevil drops his head into his hands and grinds his fists into his eyes, begging the darkness for some way not to see this. Not to feel it.

“She was gutshot. Called 911, then I went looking for a towel. Packed it around her to stop the bleeding a bit. Spoke to her a little – she asked about her son, told her he was having nice dreams about his mommy. We prayed a bit. She held onto my cross and just – slipped away. Then someone came screaming up onto the lawn and they had more fucking guns, so I just … left. Thought they were coming for me. So I went out the back.”

“Who do you think they were?”

“Don't know names or nothing, but it's MS-13, allright. They were gonna be supplying the cars for us, but I'm guessing Fernando must have had a falling out with them, without saying nothing to me. Because I have no fucking idea why they're going around killing innocent fucking girls with great big fucking guns.”

“How many were there?”

“Four. One outta each door. Machine gun and three handguns. I counted.”

“And were you carrying a gun, Mr Navarro?”

“Nah. Prefer my knife.”

Veronica titters mockingly at his joke, but her heart is about to leap out of her chest: she knows she has enough to poke a major hole in the case for Eli being the murderer.

He doesn't know about the cleanup. And why would someone clean a crime scene, before the authorities got there, unless they were trying to obscure the truth? She doubts MS-13's gun-toting footsoldiers are likely to be the cleaners as well – more likely a separate visit, by someone with interests that coincided.

“Mr Navarro, say you were somehow involved in the gang life. What means might you find to force a business – a crime scene cleaner, for example – to cover your crimes for you?”

Weevil smirks and considers the question carefully. “Well, it would depend on what kind of gangster I am, really. Biggest one is money – pay 'em outright, or have 'em owe you. Gambling's a good way to get them in. Let 'em lose a few times. Build up a debt, and be understanding and patient and even spot them money for the next game every now and then. And when you ask them to do you a favour – they can't say no.”

“Course, if I was MS-13, I'd be too fucking lazy for that and just go straight to threatenin' their families.”

“I don't suppose you've been involved in anything like that? Know any cleaners yourself?” Gibbs asks pointedly.

Weevil rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Closest thing I've ever known to a cleaner was my abuela, who looked after rich  
people for a living. And the janitor at Hearst – guess he was a cleaner as well. But I ain't leaning on anyone if that's what you're asking.”

“Thank you Mr Navarro – we'll be in touch,” Gibbs says, and frogmarches Veronica out before they can exchange another word. She looks back, and mimes an exaggerated 'bye!' and he flicks his hand in farewell. Then the thought strikes him - that might have been the last time he'll ever see Veronica Mars, and the hurt fucking paralyses him.

*

After two days of exactly nothing, Veronica's breakthrough is feeling more like a wild goose chase. The rest of the team is still staring at name after name, trying to find a link between the local gangs and Washington's six major crime scene cleaners, but she's so dispirited, she's gone back to cataloguing photos.

Evidence number. Description. Notes. Next.

Crime scene van, she finds herself typing. They've got a strange logo she's seen somewhere before. How to describe it? Some sort of coat of arms, with a B worked underneath.

“Hey Tony – what would say this looks like?”

He grunts back, but she knows he's happy enough to look away from his own monitor. “Hold your horses, probie. Got to unlock my skeleton before I can walk, here ...”

“Poor old man. This?”

He tilts his head to one side and then laughs. “We see it every day! That's a version of the Navy's insignia – it's on the front of this building. They've just reworked it for the nautical theme, I guess.”

Veronica squints at the slogan on the side of the van - “Basquiat Cleaners, something something ship shape?” and slowly sits up.

“What if they're Navy? Ex-Navy?” she asks, and it's a steady, questioning tone that isn't daring to claim any great leaps forward this time.

“Basquiat, Basquiat,” McGee is already typing, and his mouth hangs open as the screen fills up with results.

“Oh yeah, they're Navy, allright. Lots of Navy. Navy logistics, to be precise.”

“Boss – we got it!” Tony yells across the Bullpen, voice loud enough to penetrate through Vance's closed door.

Gibbs charges out, closely followed by Vance.

“Whatya got?”

“Miss Mars, care to present?”

“Why thank you, Agent DiNozzo. Don't mind if I do!” she sings.

“We've been looking for a link between crime scene cleaners and the gangs, but couldn't find one. But we found something else instead.” She flicks the photo of the Basquiat van up onto the big screen.

“This. Basquiat Cleaners - when you need it ship shape.”

“It's a part of the Navy?” Vance asks, nonplussed.

“No, Sir. The family that runs Basquiat is ex-Navy, though. It's almost like a retirement plan for them, and also takes in the family members that choose not to go into the Navy. But most of the shareholders are serving members, still on active duty. At last count – six Seaman, two petty officers, a Senior Petty Officer, and even a Chief Petty Officer. One Milton Basquiat, who's also the chairman of Basquiat Cleaning Co.”

“Basquiat Cleaning's CEO is Jackson Basquiat, who retired from the Navy in 92. His two sons run the business now; one was Navy logistics until two years ago, the other has focused on the cleaning business instead.”

“So – who's our murderer? I can buy that these guys are cleaning the sites, but why? What's the motive? Why kill Hernandez, Teixeira and Orellana?”

“I have a theory, but I need to make a phone call. Sir.”

Vance frowns, but shrugged his shoulders and stalked back to his office, leaving Gibbs to deal with Veronica's request.

“To?”

“Weevil. We need to ask if he knows a Basquiat. Any Basquiat.”

Gibbs nods. “See what I can do.” He rubs a hand over the top of his head then shoots a rueful glance at Veronica. “Try to work on motive. If we're gonna pin a murder conspiracy on one of the brass? It's gonna need to be good.”

Their conversation is short, and impersonal. Veronica can't tell if Weevil is pissed with her, or just at life in general. To be fair, he is under guard in hospital bed, just waiting to hear what charges they're going to level at him. He should be happy to help clear himself of a double murder, then, Veronica frowns.

She refuses to let him dull the joy of discovery, though, and bounds back into the Bullpen.

“Eli's primary contact in San Diego is Theodoro Basquiat, Petty Officer Second Class. And it's one of the reasons he wanted to expand the operation to Washington – Basquiat's got lots of contacts here. Told him MS-13 were easy to control. His Dad's been doing it for years, apparently,” Veronica finishes with a flourish.

Gibbs grins back. “Let's bring in Messrs Basquiat and Basquiat. See how they manage to clean up this mess,” he chortles.

*

One thing is immediately obvious, Veronica thinks. The Basquiat brothers are no laughing matter. They both still look standard military issue – even though Carlo Basquiat never served, his hair is as short, and his demeanour as stiff as his brother, who had a moderately successful career in the Navy.

They both have creepy eyes, she thinks, and wonders how that can be logged in the record of interview. Maybe Gibbs will have a clever way of making them incriminate themselves, because she is _sure_ she is sitting in the presence of a murderer.

“I know lackeys when I see them, boys. Who's putting you up to cleaning these scenes?”

“We're hired to do a job, sir. We do it well,” Antony Basquiat replies, and Carlo just smiles, as if he's way too clever to be caught out by this charade.

“Chemicals, boys. They leave a trace. And unless you can point me too another murder that took place at the Teixeira house, then you need to explain why that scene was cleaned before we, or the police, released it. We have photos of your van. We know you were there.”

Gibbs raises an eyebrow when they simply stare stonily back at him.

“So that's how it's gonna be. Well, your cooperation is just a formality at this point, so we may as well save everyone the time and just send you down to the cells until your lawyer arrives. Course, they're kind of full with all those MS-13 boys, but I hear you're all friends, so you should be okay. Just don't get 'em riled up.”

Both men's faces drain of blood, and the protest is bubbling from Carlo Basquiat's lips before Gibbs even gets his hand to the doorknob.

“Don't put us in with them! Please!”

“But they were so happy with that job they did for you – getting rid of Hernandez. Guess someone didn't much like it when they demanded a bigger split on the hot cars – was that Big Daddy Basquiat? He tell you to teach those gangsters a lesson?"

Antony Basquiat broke like a beaver dam in the spring floods.

“You don't know what it's like, Sir! They've got no respect! None at all – they threatened to go after our sister, and our mother, so we needed to show them we couldn't be pushed around. The woman wasn't even supposed to be there – the Chief said all those dirty Mexicans go to Mass every Sunday.”

“We did it as carefully and as cleanly as we could, but we just couldn't wait to watch her die. So we went outside, waited in the van. Then Navarro came, and we called MS-13 and told them he had done it. And when they'd chased him off, then we went back in and cleaned the scene.”

Veronica sat back in her chair, knowing that they had it. Not just means, motive, and opportunity, but solid testimony. A credible confession. Killers operating within their nature, rather than against it.

Beyond reasonable doubt, she finds herself whispering, and she knows it's not the Basquiat brothers she's thinking about. She has doubts about their past, doubts about his lifestyle, doubts about her own suitability for this life, but she no longer has doubts about him, about who he is. It's as if someone has lifted a huge rock from her chest.

She can breathe again.

*

Gibbs has been waiting for the question all day. He'd been expecting it yesterday, really, Veronica's bid to capitalise on what even he had to admit was a very impressive performance. The Basquiat ring was smashed, Eli Navarro was in the clear, and sooner or later, she was going to want to see him.

Later, it turned out. After she'd finished cataloguing all the crime scene photos, appropriately logged all the witness statements, and chased up the NCIS filing protocols to be doubly sure of her work. After she'd done a round in the shooting range with Ziva, and a session on some obscure computer programme with McGee.

Then she'd come back with coffee. Held it out, then pulled it back just as his hand was about to wrap around the warm polysterene.

“Can I visit him again?”

Girl messed with a Marine's coffee and she wanted a _favour_?

DiNozzo was shaking with mirth just a few metres away and Ziva was far too interested in her computer for this conversation to have escaped her. Tough. Kid was just going to have to face facts in public.

“Nope.”

“But Gibbs!”

“I said, nope.”

Her chin drops and the blue-green eyes turn icy. And cunning. He wonders, for a moment, which one of them was actually the bad influence – smart, cool Veronica Mars, with her gift for manipulation, or Navarro, who'd been running a biker gang at age 15, jailed by 18, and graduated to organised crime at 21.

And was now facing a full deck of motor vehicle theft and federal conspiracy charges.

“Weevil is no longer the subject of an ongoing NCIS investigation,” she protests. “He's been cleared of any connection to the murders and is back to being a simple material witness.”

“He was a just a witness last time you broke the rules,” Gibbs points out. “Last thing we need is more inadmissible evidence. And just cause he's out of our hair doesn't mean he's done with the system, Veronica. You know that.”

“I won't even sit on the goddamn bed!” she explodes, and then begins to plead. “I just want to see that's he's allright. From outside the door if I have to. Please, Gibbs.”

He nearly relents, then thinks of the way they watch each other, the air between them charged with lust and want. There's no sanity there, no restraint in their connection, and every time they see each other will just be a prelude to another explosion.

He refuses to add fuel to that fire. Not when it threatens to destroy the best young investigator he's ever seen.

“What's so special about this kid? How does he have such a hold over you?” he asks, genuinely puzzled.

She snarls, and he turns away, sure she's not going to answer. So she shouts it after him.

“He's the only one who never made me choose, Gibbs. He's the one that actually _liked_ Veronica, and never asked me to change.”

She quietens, then, but the words are still devastating.

“If it wasn't for Eli, I wouldn't be here now. I'd probably be married to Duncan Kane, trying to kid myself that sleepwalking through life was 'normal'. Or I'd be busy trying to drink myself into oblivion with Logan Echolls, still believing that love had to _hurt_.”

“Even my Dad needed me to be safe, and to call, and not to take risks, but Eli? He was just there for me, and when he couldn't be, he gave me the strength to do it by myself.” One hand crosses over her body to reach over her shoulder, the fingers flexing convulsively, over and over again.

***


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's the first intern they've ever had. It's the first time anyone has let her near a real federal case. And her chief suspect is the reason she made it out of high school alive. Life's a bitch, Veronica Mars. Then you have to grow up and figure out how to live.

**Chapter Seven**  


Gibbs is still thinking about secrets, and redemption, and always wanting the things you can't have when fate steps in.

The security desk rings up, and as luck would have it, Veronica Mars takes the call.

“Oh. Really? Mr Navarro? Eli Navarro?” She raises her eyebrows in question, and shoots a frown towards Gibbs. “I'll let him know.”

“You have a visitor downstairs,” she says drily. “I'll just … go poof.”

“Caf-Pow for Abby. Coffee, black, for me. The little place on the corner of Harwood and North Street. Walk.”

“But I'm from California! We don't have legs!”

Gibbs watches Tony's face screw up in temptation and readies himself for a headslap, even as he wonders what Eli Navarro could possibly want with them. The Basquiat family had gotten greedy and wanted to lock up the Washington market in the same way Navarro had done in San Diego, and killing Navarro's Washington contact must have seemed the best way to do it. He had been nothing but an innocent bystander in NCIS' murder investigation, and he'd been helpful, even when it had implicated him in other federal crimes.

“Tony, Ziva. Go down and get the kid. Make sure you don't cross paths with Veronica – bring him up the stairs if you have too.”

“On it, boss.”

Fifteen minutes later, the kid waiting for him in Interrogation One is no kid at all. He barely gives Ziva a glance, and focuses the full weight of his glare on Gibbs.

Doesn't waste time, either.

“I'm going down for this shit. I know that. But I got bigger problems. The Basquiats might have wanted me alive, now they're gone? MS-13 is gunning for me. And that's not all.”

Navarro pulls a photograph from inside his jacket and shakes it in front of Gibbs' nose. “Until I'm out of the picture, they're gonna be gunning for her.”

Gibbs finds himself staring a photograph of Veronica Mars exiting the Camelot Motel, Navarro pulling her back for a final kiss, their faces glowing with satisfaction and affection. He's more interested, though, in the irregular red letters scrawled across their bodies: YOUR BITCH IS NEXT.

He looks up at the barely-recognisable man in front of him. A plan is burning behind his eyes, and something tells him it won't be small, or easy.

“I'll plead guilty to organising the ring. Whaddaya call it? Participating in a corrupt organisation? Conspiracy to commit car theft, whatever.”

“Helpful of you. Why?”

“Cause you're gonna send me to jail. And then you're gonna get me out. And nobody's gonna bother Veronica again.” Not even me, he's saying.

Not if she has her way, Gibbs thinks silently. That girl will be getting herself into lots more messes yet, no matter where she ends up. But something told him Navarro knew that already, and was doing his best to give her a clean slate.

“No promises,” he barks, but he's already calling Fornell to make it happen.

Because he discovering that he's willing to compromise if it means he gets to keep Veronica Mars.

*

Weevil nearly laughs at how eager the dude is to pick up on his deal. He doesn't delude himself that it's about him – it's her, and that's fine with him. If he were a federal agent, he'd want Veronica on his team too, and Weevil gone makes that possible.  
  
And this guy, Gibbs, he might have a chance of keeping her safe. Teach her a bit of sense. He seems to like to do things by the book, and Veronica, well. She needs to learn that.  
  
Which is why he doesn't hold out much hope when he lifts his head after the agent finishes a cryptic conversation on his phone, full of silences and single word answers.  
  
“Gotta favour to ask.”  
  
“You're fresh out, kid.”  
  
“Please.”  
  
Gibbs simply raises his eyebrows, forcing Weevil to continue.  
  
“I'd like to talk to Veronica. Alone.”  
  
“Not happening.”  
  
“ _Please_ , dude. You're gonna send me straight from here to some lock up, I know that. I just wanna say goodbye. We've known each other since we were in kindergarden.”  
  
Weevil's not sure who is more surprised when Gibbs says yes.  
  
*  
  
Veronica is chilling in the forensics lab with Abby when Gibbs interrupts them.  
  
“Bonding over evidence analysis?”  
  
Abby rolls her eyes at him. “Please. As if there's any other type of bonding.”  
  
Gibbs chuckles – it's a phenomena she's only heard with Abby – and jerks his head at Veronica.  
  
“You got ten minutes with Navarro. Interview 3. Don't do anything stupid.”  
  
She blinks, and her legs won't seem to move.  
  
“Nine minutes.”  
  
Veronica runs.  
  
He's waiting for her, face drawn and worried, body bent over the table. She slides into the chair next to him, and wonders exactly what Gibbs would define as stupid.  
  
“Hey, chica.”  
  
“Que pasa, chico?”  
  
“I'm thinking ten to twenty?”  
  
“Jesus, Weevil. Don't say shit like that. You've turned yourself in, you're cooperating with the authorities – they'll go easy on you.”  
  
“Yeah? Strike number three, baby. They don't go easy on that, even if you've got God on your side.” He's shaking his head, almost resigned, and looks regretful when he raises his eyes to meet hers. “Gonna be a long one, this time. May as well throw away the key.”  
  
Forget about me, she hears.  
  
Her chair clatters to the floor, and it's only then she realises she's on her feet, pulling him up too.  
  
“V?”  
  
“I don't give up on my friends, Navarro. I can't. And you ...you ...”  
  
She should be able to say it. They're adults now. But this thing had started with favours and debts and calculation, and even friendship hadn't come easy. It had been easier to admit she wanted him, really. Because actually liking the guy who was getting you off on a regular basis seemed too much like a relationship, and if life had taught Veronica Mars anything … she sucked at relationships. (The fact that she had cheated on all three of her serious boyfriends with him? Exhibit fucking A.) For three years they had hooked up, screwed around, and fucked each other senseless, happy to ignore actual feelings. It wasn't until he was in jail that she'd been forced to face the truth: love was just another debt. Something they both resented, and never talked about. But it wasn't going away, no matter how hard they scratched and picked at it.  
  
Maybe it was time just to learn to live with it.  
  
It makes you vulnerable, she reminds herself, as his fingers burn into her wrist. Compromises you, her internal voice shrills, as the heat rises between them.  
  
“What, Veronica?”  
  
“You … we … Jesus, Eli. So much fucking crap, you know? We've been through so much and the thought that I might lose you again … I can't. Not like this,” she rambles.  
  
He moves closer, trapping her face between his hands, forcing her to hold his gaze. “You won't lose me, chica. I promise. There's always gonna be another bar, another beer.” He smirks, and they're seventeen again, teasing each other with sexual innuendo and sly, hidden touches. “Another bed.”  
  
“Remember Spring Break, your sophomore year?”  
  
She'd told Piz and her Dad she was spending the week in DC, checking out accommodation for her summer with the FBI. He'd even seen her off at the airport, that poor, faithful boy – and Veronica could feel Weevil's eyes hot on her back as she kissed Piz goodbye outside the security check, protesting she was no good at airside goodbyes. (Spring Break, Weevil insisted, had to start at the airport, and he'd locked them into the disabled toilets and made her come three times in the half hour before their flight to Guadalajara was called.)  
  
She moans a little and he drops his forehead down onto hers, breath rasping in between them.  
  
“Always a beer waiting for you, V. No matter what happens.”  
  
She pulls back a little to look at him, and there's a warning in his eyes. Don't ask, it says, and she's fluent in this, half-truths and the language of better-you-don't-know. So she pushes herself up on tiptoes, and kisses them away, those dangerous words, their tongues tangling together until they're straining against each other.  
  
“Can't do this,” he rasps finally, lifting his head. “I won't fuck things up for you again.”  
  
She manages to nod, raking her hair back from her face with a shaking hand. Closes her eyes, summoning the strength to leave, but can't force herself to say the words. Makes her feet move instead, and manages three steps towards the door before she pauses to look back.  
  
“Love you long time,” she mouths at him, refusing to give in to the tears.  
  
*  
  
Eli Navarro is sentenced on a Thursday in mid-August. Gibbs is conscious he has just one more week of Veronica before she disappears back to California, ready to settle into her final year of college. She's pulling away somehow, and he can't tell if it's because of Navarro, or because she's trying to decide whether or not to join NCIS.  
  
They're just back from a scene when she goes missing.  
  
He's mad – they've got work to do, dammit – but he's worried, too. He thought she might ask for the day off to go and sit in court – he might have even said yes – but she had been steely-eyed and focused on her work all day. He knows that feeling, but he also knows how grief can creep in around the edges and blindside you.  
  
He finds her in the stairwell, tear tracks on her face and breath still raspy. He sits down next to her and gives her a few minutes to pull it together.  
  
“What's going on in there, Mars?”  
  
She pouts, and rolls her eyes. “So many things, Gibbs!” One shoulder shrugs up and he can see how difficult this is for her. So he has to make the start.  
  
“Navarro?”  
  
She flinches, and looks away.  
  
“You probably think I'm stupid, don't you. Hung up on a guy who's always gonna be a liability.”  
  
“If you were stupid, you wouldn't be here. Do you know how many interns we've had at NCIS,Veronica?”  
  
She simply raises her eyebrows.  
  
“None. You're the first. I don't train people here. Don't take 'em out of Quantico, don't take 'em out of college.”  
  
She frowns. “Then why ...”  
  
“Vance told me the FBI wanted you. So I looked at your file. And it became pretty obvious you didn't belong there.”  
  
“I don't belong here, either. I can't be trusted.”  
  
She actually believed it, he realises with a shock.  
  
“Bullshit, Mars. You did the wrong thing, but you made it up to us. You kept going when all the evidence was against him. If he had been the murderer, you would have known what to do.”  
  
“No one really ever knows what they are going to do in that situation, kid. You just have to do the job the best you know how, and trust yourself to do the right thing.” He pauses, remembering Ziva's imprisonment, and his own vendetta against the Reynosos. “No one's hands are completely clean, Veronica. We've all got our own pasts to deal with.”  
  
He gestures back towards the bullpen, and stares her straight in the eyes. “I handpicked every agent in that room. If I want you on the team, you can be sure that you've got what it takes, Veronica.”  
  
She needs some time to process, he can tell, so he stands up and leaves her to it. She's got stuff to work through, and most of a year to do it. So he won't put any pressure on her. Yet.  
  
 *****

College is a slog, now, after seeing how things actually work out in the world. She amuses herself by imagining Gibbs' face if he heard some of the crap her sociology of crime lecturer is spouting, and Ziva's when they talk about terrorism. She's added a couple of technical courses to better prepare herself for Abby and McGee, and for the first time in her student life is relying on Wallace and Mac to pass them. She perseveres, though, because feeling stupid is not her forte.  
  
It's her Dad who notices the biggest change. She's not doing a lot for him – her study schedule has picked up in the approach to midterms – but there's a tricky missing persons case that devolves into what just might be child prostitution.  
  
“I can't handle this myself,” she tells him, and starts preparing a dossier on the case. “It's bigger than we are.”  
  
He blinks in surprise. “You want to give it to Vinnie?”  
  
“Well, no, but he's obliged to pass it on to the Feds. And I've already emailed a copy to a contact there, so ...” she flashes him her widest smile, and he looks proud. She may not trust Vinnie, but she's learning to trust due process, she tells him.  
  
*

She finds it online.  
  
Her alerts are set for anything to do with Cumberland prison, so she's forever sorting through stories of new inmates, protests, the occasional riot. And every week, two or three death notices, which she barely glances at. Maybe she looks because this week, there's only one.

“FCI Cumberland hereby reports the death in custody on September 12, 2011, of Eli Antonio Navarro, aged 22 years, of Neptune, California. Relatives have been notified.”  
  
Before the shock sets in, she finds herself wondering exactly who they would have told. Angel? He's up in Chino. Little Ophelia, and whoever is looking after her now that Letty Navarro has passed? She wonders if there has been a funeral, and if anyone even knows to invite her. She wonders if she would have been welcome, or if he would have wanted her there.  
  
She needs to know how he died. But not now. Now, she can't do anything except curl up into a ball in her bed, and ache. Wish for tears. Wish for a messy breakdown. Not this cold, dull thing that sucks her into a gaping emptiness.  
  
*  
  
The first possibility she contemplates is suicide. Cumberland was medium security, but it wasn't a pleasant place. It had been three weeks before he was allowed to speak to anyone other than his lawyer. His voice had been flat and hard, when they'd finally spoken. Forbidding, in the way the Weevil used to be, before. She tried not to hate it, the way he had to become someone else to survive inside, but she'd never been good at keeping the sarcasm inside, and he'd known. For a while, she'd had nightmares about whether it was that that broke him.  
  
But this was the kid who had confessed to crimes he didn't commit in order to get his grandma out of jail. The guy who had risked his life for an ungrateful gang that had betrayed him. The criminal who judged six months in jail as a fair price for the chance to avenge his best friend's death.  
  
This was the man who had loved her, and had walked away again and again rather than allow her to compromise herself for him.  
  
He wasn't made to break, she realises, and begins to dig.  
  
*  
  
Her stomach revolts at the sight of his name on the death certificate. She forces herself to ignore the harsh black capitals, and extract the information. Time of death. Date of death. Cause of death.  
  
Single stab wound to the aorta, she reads, and remembers their last conversation. “More knives in this place than there were in Neptune, V. You can buy 'em, make 'em, take 'em off someone else – easier to get hold of than fucking cigarettes,” he'd snorted, scoffing at her concern. “Don't worry about me, V. Gotta good crew in here, and sides – been in more knifefights than most of these motherfuckers.”  
  
A single stab wound. Didn't even sound like a fight. She can see him, in her minds eye, sleeping on his bunk, or dozing in the sun in the exercise yard. But he's always alert, a blur of fists and aggression if someone gets too close, and it's just … not Weevil, to die that way.  
  
Not Weevil, she remembers thinking, tasting the idea in her mouth.  
  
The medical examiner is an unfamiliar name, and she googles it, to see where he works. Nowhere near the prison, she finds. “A consultant to a range of federal agencies,” his professional webpage tells her.  
  
It's Gibbs, in the end, who makes her sure. The FBI's offer had arrived a week earlier, and they were pushing hard to get her to Quantico. He calls just as she despairs of ever hearing from NCIS.  
  
“Birdy told me you might be thinking of coming to Washington,” he says, too casual.  
  
“Maybe. Not the best of memories,” Veronica admits. “Then, it sucks here too.” She wants to say his name, but it sticks in her throat.  
  
“Heard about Navarro. I'm sorry, Veronica. Only met the kid a few times, but one thing I do know – he'd be the first to tell you to walk away from the past. Don't let it ruin your life,” he says.  
  
There's a strange inflection there, one that's begging her to ask questions. If she's right, he can't say anything, so she figures it's his way of telling her to look into it. (She refuses to be wrong.)  
  
“I'm trying,” she says, and it's only half a lie. “Thanks, Gibbs. For everything.”  
  
“I'll take it out on your hide yet,” he says casually, and there's promise enough in that to allow her to push the FBI paperwork to the neglected back corner of her desk. Everything else, she pushes away, for now. Hope will eat you alive it you let it, and she's got papers to write, finals to study for, and graduation to survive.  
  
She'll find him when they're done.

***  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's the first intern they've ever had. It's the first time anyone has let her near a real federal case. And her chief suspect is the reason she made it out of high school alive. Life's a bitch, Veronica Mars. Then you have to grow up and figure out how to live.

**Chapter Eight**

The paperwork arrives before Gibbs gets around making an offer. He'd mentioned it casually, and Director Vance had said they'd be glad to have her permanently, but really – Personnel wanting her bank details and transcripts before her prospective boss had bothered to offer her the job? Typical NCIS.

Her email to Gibbs is short and pointed and he calls her back within the day.

“Do you want the job or not?”

“Well, that depends. Am I the new lunchlady, or the janitor, or working with Ducky downstairs? It's not like, say, anyone actually offered me a specific job with a job title!”

“Probationary agent. Take it or leave it. Though I hear the lunchroom is hiring too.”

She can hear the smile in his voice, and she can picture Tony listening in the background and Ziva lurking somewhere out of sight but within earshot. Tim will be down in the lab with Abby, trying to resist the urge to listen in, and Ducky will look up after the call and simply let Gibbs share the news.

“Yes, boss,” she says, and Veronica Mars, girl detective, is no more.

But she's not quite ready to become probationary agent Mars just yet.

“There wasn't a start date on the paperwork, so I'm assuming that's flexible?”

Gibbs isn't particularly amused – he's probably told them to clear out the spare desk already – but someone must have told him it's customary to let college graduates have some time off before they sign on for good. And if Gibbs doesn't know that, she's quite willing to remind him.

“When?”

“After the summer. September 15th?”

“This isn't college, probie. July 1st. ”

“That gives me two weeks to pack up my stuff, say goodbye to my friends and family, and move halfway across the country. August 1st? Please, boss?”

“Don't lay it on too thick, probie. You better not be late, this time. See you in August.”

The line goes dead, and Veronica rolls her eyes. She wants to shriek and holler and phone her father with the good news, but all of that can wait. She has six weeks to put five years behind her. And it might take her that long to find him.

She starts at the beginning.

The wire gates are standing slightly open, and the avenue of stacked car bodies leading back to Angel's garage is as unwelcoming as it's ever been. It's familiar, though, and the sense memory takes her back. She's sitting on a Harley, the power of it shuddering up through the seat and his leather-clad back warm under her fingertips. She's curled on the ancient couch in the corner of the workshop, calculus and history books open on her lap, but her attention on the play of muscles under his wifebeater as he replaces her broken headlights. She's pouting as she pulls on a helmet, and he's laughing at her, eyes warm and teeth flashing and so beautiful with it she wants to pounce.

She's on that couch again a year later, and she can't breathe as he peels off the dark blue overalls, ink and muscle and man revealed in a slow tease. Duncan's been preoccupied with Meg, and she's been trying for normal, but Weevil's dragging her back with every touch. She's pulling her shirt over her head, and he's unsnapping her jeans even as he asks if she's sure, if she's really sure. Her voice had wobbled, but her hands had been steady enough as they found every tattoo and swell and hollow and crisp swirl of hair that had been tempting her since that first day of junior year.

And it's not even her best memory here. The one that leaves her warmest is the memory of his smile, warm and indulgent, after she'd asked him to return Madison Sinclair's car. He should have been pissed off, even if she had paid him for the job, and even a few months earlier would have been furious that she was going soft, going easy on the 09ers he hated so much. But he laughed, instead, and shook his head fondly as she stood there under her umbrella, in her fancy suit and high heels, the picture of everything Weevil hated the most. He'd teased her, but sounded almost admiring, and she knew it then, even if she refused to admit it to herself.

He'd do anything for Veronica Mars. And she'd do anything for him.

That's why she's chasing down a dead man, she decides. She needs to be sure, and to know why. Maybe even put this thing behind her, she lectures herself as she slides out of her SUV and pushes open the door to the workshop.

It's dark inside, and dusty. No freshly painted luxury cars lurking under dustsheets, no anonymous engine blocks dangling from the hoist, ready to drop into a new chassis. Nothing valuable at all, just another abandoned workshop, she thinks, and she's refusing to remember the sly jibes, and the reggaeton beat, and the laughter that used to spill out of this place.

She pushes the garage doors further apart, and light filters into the dark spaces. The couch is still there, and the counter that divides the workshop from the office, and the rickety table that saw more poker games than lunches. On one wall is a bank of lockers, and on the other, the random detritus of life in a garage – fan belts, spare tyres, hoses and clamps and fittings. And hanging from a nail, right by the door, a single, small motorcycle helmet.

He'd always said she looked so goddamn cute in it, he was never giving it back to his little cousin. “Just take it, chica, you earned it.” But her Dad hadn't been aware of how much time she'd been spending on the back of Weevil's bike, and then he'd been kicked out of the PCH and she didn't need a helmet anymore. But whereever he had gone, he had taken his own helmet, and simply left hers – as if it was waiting for her, she realises.

Maybe it was.

She crosses the workshop in three desperate strides and pulls it off the wall so quickly it slips out of her hands. Veronica winces as it bounces on the concrete floor, and then stills as it rolls to reveal a small, folded square of paper shaken free of the lining.

“ _Una mas cerveza, V?_ ”

“Don't mind if I do, Eli. Don't mind if I do,” she whispers to the still air.

*

The bar stood at one end of a long, sandy beach. The wrong end, really – the waves came sweeping in unimpeded, and the headland was too steep for anything more than an already trashed jeep to make it over. An hour of trudging through sand tended to defeat everyone but the surfers, a few campers, and the odd lunchtime adventurer. At 8am on a Tuesday? Veronica was pretty sure they'd have the place to themselves.

The border police hadn't even raised an eyebrow at a lone blonde woman looking to cross into Mexico just after midnight on a weekday; there was no line to speak of, but they hadn't even searched her car before stamping her passport with a theatrical flourish that had her giggling despite the strange nervousness building in her belly. By the time she reached Chamela, her mood had settled into quiet anticipation, calmed, perhaps, by the magnificence of the dawn as it broke over the Guadalajara hills.

It was the same Pacific Ocean they'd shared in Neptune, Veronica told herself as the car rolled to a stop in front of the great expanse of blue. A different beach, a different country, but same ocean, and that had to mean something. Could she take courage from it, perhaps? Or find an omen, something about constancy and permanence and the pointlessness of change?

She snorted and forced herself out of the car. Eli was the philosopher and she was the pragmatist, she reminded herself as she kicked off her flipflops. She was here to say goodbye, not fill her head with romantic bullshit that would make it even harder to leave.

Veronica locks the car and steps out onto the deliciously warm sand. Later in the day, it would become too hot to walk on, but right now, it is perfect, she thinks, and refuses to inspect the metaphor further.

Stop thinking, Veronica.

Stop. Thinking.

The rhythmic crash of the waves and the crunch of sand under her feet makes it easier for a while, but as the sign hanging from the palm thatched verandah comes into focus, all the rights and wrongs and smart and stupids come rushing back. It is pride, in the end, that sets her knuckles to the closed door, three hard raps that send her mind spinning down paths of death knells, and fate, and endings.

She hears the window sash move before she remembers where the living quarters are. His sleepy growl hurls a few choice adjectives her way before he remembers where he is, and manages a halfway polite “Somos cerrado!” He is probably halfway back to bed when she yells in her best federal agent voice: “Open up! It's the law!”

He chuckles all the way down the stairs, and his smirk is scandalous by the time he opens the door.

“Hope you brought your handcuffs, chica.”

She isn't saying one goddamn word to that, because, really? Too tempting, and she is going to try and keep this … friendly. For as long as she can, at least. Which probably isn't _very_ long, she accepts as she turns to face him, eyes hungry as they catalogue every familiar line and curve of his bare torso.

“Hello, Eli.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You come all this way just to say hello?”

“No. I came to say a lot of things. But hello is the traditional place to start,” she snaps, glad for the rush of annoyance.

“Because we're all kinds of traditional,” he snorts, before his expression softens. “Hello, Veronica. What can I,” his eyes flicked down the length of her body, teasing “do for you?”

She'd meant to be gentle, but the words had been burning her alive for too long. “I thought you were dead! You let me think you _died_ in that place!”

“I knew you'd come looking for me, chica. I knew I could count on that. Thought it'd be sooner, to be honest. I did my best to leave you a trail.”

“You faked your own death! I had no way of knowing to expect that – people die in jail every single day, Eli.”

“Juan.”

“Que?”

“Mi nombre, senorita. Soy Juan Reyes Aveyron.” He took her hand in his own, and lifted it to his lips. “Encantada.”

She was still angry, but his lips were moving across her knuckles, his tongue dipping in between to anoint every square inch of skin. Something inside of her, something unfamiliar, is telling her to let go. To forgive him. To enjoy him while she can.

And because it wasn't _just_ lust, she was minded to listen.

She steps closer, but places a hand on his chest to stop him from pulling her fully into him.

“I've accepted an offer from NCIS.”

“So I've heard. Congratulations, chica.”

“Well, colour me not surprised. You're still in touch with Gibbs?”

He rolls his eyes and nods reluctantly. “Not so much Gibbs, but Fornell. He organised this thing. Said he was pissed about you choosing to go with them and not the Fibbies.”

“I knew you had to have had help. That day you came to the Navy Yard?”

“Yup. All done proper. New passport, new identity. New mission in life – told ya I'd do this place up one day.”

“And which part of your soul did you sell in return?”

He drags his hand over his scalp and looked away for a moment. When his black eyes find hers again, they are almost defiant.

“The part where I never contact a federal agent called Veronica Mars ever again.”

Her jaw drops and then firms with anger. Gibbs. Another man who wanted to control her. Because that worked so well.

“Well, technically, I've contacted you. And I'm not Probationary Agent Mars until I start work. In another four weeks,” she explains, reaching for his hands to lace their fingers together.

“So, until then, you're ...”

“Just a girl. Amber. Tara. Maybe Betty?”

He smiles at the memory of all the scams they had run together; the personas she could slip into and out of at will, the wigs, the glasses, her shockingly diverse wardrobe.

“I liked Betty. She had that good girl thing going on. Reminded me of a girl I used to know,” he teased. “But she should know – there's this girl, Veronica. We're kinda on different paths, so we don't see each other much. But she'll always be the one for me, and if she needs me, I'll always be there for her. She's my girl.”

And right like that, she is back to where she started. Wondering how she could walk away from this, and why she would ever want to.

“Ya gotta do what ya gotta do, V. And you, chica - you were born to do this. Go out there and be the best damn agent the federal government has ever seen.”

He shrugs his shoulders and looks away for a moment, but his gaze is fierce when he looks back.

“And maybe sometimes, you gotta take a break. Be someone else for a while. Chill out at the beach. Those times?” His voice drops to a possessive growl. “You're fucking mine.”

Their bodies slam together as the words run out, hopes and dreams for the path not taken expressed in a heated tangle of hands and tongues. They never even make it out of the bar, settling into a chair next to the bolted door and grinding their way to bliss before he has a chance to find the small sign that says “cerrado”.

Two weeks later, Veronica makes her way back up the beach, alone. He had protested, but she had laid a finger over his lips and shook her head.

“We can't be photographed together. They can never know who I am. I'll never be able to stay long.”

His eyes lit with understanding, and hope, and she couldn't help but smile back, even as her heart ached at just how little she could give him.

For now, she vowed.

For now.

_fin_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is the first time I have completed a long story in one fell swoop.  Please make it worthwhile and let me know if you enjoyed it.  
> 


End file.
